PhD-candidate ‘City-based strategies to improve cardiovascular health in Europe'

We are looking for an enthusiastic PhD-candidate who is keen to develop, deploy, and evaluate city-based strategies to improve cardiovascular health in Europe. Deadline 4 Nov ’25 21 Oct ’25 published Vacancy ID 2025-6440

Job description

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death globally. In parallel with an ageing population and increased prevalence of CVD, there is also a major drive towards urbanisation. Around 75% of European citizens already live in urban areas, which is expected to reach 84% by 2050. Urban living accentuates existing challenges in CVD, including poverty, migration, lack of access to healthcare, exposure to environmental risks, and the adverse lifestyle impacts from living in a city. There is no shortage of evidence-based interventions that combat CVD, including educational programmes, screening, prediction, lifestyle change and pharmaceutical therapy. Unfortunately, there is a major and critical lack of effective implementation, which consistently fail to reach individuals that would benefit the most. Barriers to healthcare access and early intervention, combined with inadequate outreach, have impeded the effectiveness of prior healthcare interventions to underserved communities.

In a large intersectoral European consortium, we bring together industry partners, municipalities, academia, learned societies, and patient organisations to cocreate, pilot, evaluate, and iterate a series of city-level strategies to combat CVD. These will combine medical, technical, social and policy innovations, leveraging health technology from industry partners and existing municipal infrastructure to address the multifaceted and complex nature of urban CVD.

Specific tasks for the incoming PhD candidate include:

• Developing standardised metrics to assess CVD health of cities in relation to health inequities that can be used as benchmark and to measure progress;
• Identifying a suite of effective city-based strategies across the CVD continuum, from awareness and prevention to detection and management, taking into account local, national and international policies;
• Identifying innovative solutions and leveraging existing and new multi-model data to improve access to and uptake of city-based CVD strategies;
• Co-creating, implementing and evaluating city-based strategies for CVD with citizens, community leaders, and municipalities.

In addition to your research, you will spend about 10% of your time on teaching activities. The initial duration of employment is 1 year. After a positive evaluation, the employment will be extended with 2 years.

Requirements

We are seeking for enthusiastic candidates that meet the following requirements:

• A completed MSc degree (or similar) in epidemiology, data science, (bio)statistics, health sciences, medicine, or a related field
• Experience or interest in cardiovascular research
• Excellent analytical skills and experience in handling complex databases and advanced data analytics (preferably in R)
• Excellent communication skills in English, both in writing and speaking
• Creative and pro-active, with good collaborative skills and a sound academic attitude
• Able to work independently and efficiently and meet consortium deadlines

Conditions of employment

The maximum salary for this position (32 - 36 hours) is € 3.108,00 gross per month based on full-time employment.

In addition, we offer an annual benefit of 8.3%, holiday allowance, travel expenses and career opportunities. The terms of employment are in accordance with the Cao University Medical Centers (UMC).

Department

The PhD-position is situated within the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, Department of Global Public Health and Bioethics of the UMC Utrecht. The Julius Center is one of the 10 divisions within the UMC Utrecht and has distinguished itself through high-quality (clinical) epidemiologic research and education. The Department of Global Public Health and Bioethics is embedded in the Julius Center and aims to promote health and equity in health through high-quality epidemiological and public health research and education.

Additional information

Contact our colleague: Sanne Peters 088 756 81 81 s.a.e.peters@umcutrecht.nl

Werken bij UMC Utrecht Werken in het UMC Utrecht betekent werken op het snijvlak van onderzoek, onderwijs, zorg en techniek. In onze academische setting leren en innoveren we continu en zijn nieuwe ontwikkelingen altijd binnen handbereik. Lees meer over UMCU