Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Elucidating psychological and social risk factors for low back pain in highly physically active adolescents: a case study in female pre-professional dancers." "Nathalie Roussel" "Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA), Movement Antwerp (MOVANT)" "The general purpose of this study is to elucidate psychological and social risk factors for low back pain (LBP) in highly physically active adolescents. Using a qualitative research design, we will explore perceived causes (psychological and social) of LBP using female pre-professional dancers as a case study. This will lay the foundation for fundamental prospective studies examining causes of LBP in adolescents. Low back pain (LBP) is the leading cause of disability worldwide. The prevalence of LBP rapidly increases during adolescence, especially in females. The multidimensional nature (including biological, psychological and social factors) of LBP is widely recognized in adults, but has, despite the fact that LBP during adolescence is a risk factor for spinal pain in adulthood, rarely been investigated in adolescents. Elite adolescent dancers are a model population to unravel the etiology of adolescent LBP as they are a homogenous group that is highly physically active and that is at risk for developing LBP. The novelty of our approach is the unraveling of LBP from a multidisciplinary perspective in adolescents at risk for developing LBP in a challenging period of their life. The proposed qualitative methodology will allow to explore these factors in more depth, as validated questionnaires to examine psychological and social factors in adolescent dancers are lacking. The collaboration in this project between several disciplines will allow to obtain a more detailed insight in the person as a whole, including a great part of the individual and contextual factors underlying the etiology of LBP in highly active adolescents. More importantly, the results of the project will lay the foundation for the continuation of the research in the etiology of LBP in dancers and adolescents." "The effectiveness of social policy targeted at households with disabled children in Flanders: does the existing set of social policies succeed in reducing the poverty risk of disabled children?" "Sarah Marchal" "Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy" "Families with disabled children combine both direct and indirect costs that likely have a negative impact on their poverty risk. First, they face higher direct costs due to the child's medical and care needs. Second, they face higher indirect costs as they need to provide more care which jeopardises the parents' engagement in the labour market. On top of that, families with disabled children often have a lower socioeconomic status than families without disabled children, increasing their poverty risk independent of having a disabled child. Many Western welfare states have implemented a set of benefits and services for families with disabled children to mitigate these direct and indirect costs. However, we lack insight in the actual effectiveness of these social policies in reaching this objective. Therefore, this research project aims to evaluate to what extent the existing set of social policies for families with disabled children in Flanders succeeds in reducing their poverty risk by increasing family income directly or indirectly. Specifically, the project will work on three related research strands. First, we will explore the non-take-up of social support for disabled children as this phenomenon can substantially impede the actual effectiveness of social policies. Second, we will look into the direct poverty reducing effect of the existing cash allowances for families with disabled children, in particular the supplemental child benefit. Finally, the indirect impact will be investigated via the causal effect of the presence of disabled children on parental employment. The budget requested within this BOF-KP project will be used to finance a data request with the Belgian Crossroads Bank for Social Security for the extension of an existing administrative dataset. Obtaining longitudinal employment information, information from the Ministry of Education and from the tax administration, will allow us to shed light on the three research strands. We will apply quantitative methods on this unique administrative dataset." "Evaluation of activities related to sexual health of Sub-Saharan African Migrants" "Centre for Population, Family and Health" "This project evaluates activities for the promotion of sexual health of sub-Saharan African migrants (SAM) in Flanders. Based on the results of the document-analysis and the qualitative research (key informant interview and focus group discussions), the research team will formulate recommendations for future activities for SAM." "Oncotolk. An explorative study on communication problems in interpreter-mediated consultations with migrant oncology patients." "Johan Wens" "Primary and interdisciplinary care Antwerp (ELIZA)" "The ultimate goal of this project is to optimize the provision of care for migrant cancer patients and thier families who need to rely on interpreters. We will do so by creating the conditions that enable both patients and their next of kin to better understand the information provided to them in orde for them to be able to be involved in the process of shared decision making. This means that we aim to improve: - the interaction beween patients, their next of kin, interpreters and doctors during interpreter mediated consultations - the interaction between doctors and interpreters during collaboration by offering to all of them evidence-based recommendations on how to interact with each other during the interpreter mediated consultation. It should be clarified at this stage that in this study, we perceive patients and family members attending the consultation as a single recipient of the doctor's communication. Therefore, in this study, we also include family members whose behaviour during the consultation and understanding after the consultation will be investigated next to the patients' own behaviour and understanding." "Triaging and Referring In Adjacent General and Emergency departements (the TRIAGE-trial): a cluster randomised controlled trial." "Veronique Verhoeven" "Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, Economics, Primary and interdisciplinary care Antwerp (ELIZA)" "Introduction: Patients who might also go to the general practitioner (GP) frequently consult emergency departments (ED). This leads to additional costs for both government and patient and a high workload for emergency physicians in Flanders. The Belgian government wants to address this problem by improved collaboration between EDs and general practice cooperatives (GPCs). Intervention: Patients presenting at the ED during out-of-hours (OOH) will be triaged and allocated to the most appropriate service. For this purpose the Manchester Triage System (MTS) which is commonly used in Flemish hospitals, will be extended (eMTS). By doing so a trained nurse will be able to diverge suitable patients towards the GPC. Methodology: We will conduct a cluster RCT in which eligible ED patients will be diverged to the GPC using the eMTS. We will collect data using our operational anonymous database for OOH care (iCAREdata). We will study the use of the eMTS, the effectiveness and effects of triage, work load changes, epidemiology at both departments, patient safety, health insurance (HIS) and patient expenditures. Furthermore facilitators and barriers will be studied and an incident analysis of problem cases will be performed. Outcome: The primary outcome is the proportion of patients who enter the ED and are handled by the GP after triage. Secondary outcome measurements are related to safety: referral rate to the ED by the GP, proportion of patients visiting the ED again within two weeks, proportion of patients not following the triage advice and file review for selected patients. Results: We will generate a generic model of triage applicable to all Belgian EDs and GPCs. The model will consist of a validated triage instrument, a manual for setting up triage and scientific support for both effectiveness and safety. In addition we expect to achieve financial savings for the HIS and for the patient." "Labour Migration and Population Ageing: anlyzing the effectiveness of current labour market integration and job councelling trajectories for newly arrived immigrants and individuals with a migration background in Flanders." "Karel Neels" "Centre for Population, Family and Health" "Between 2015 and 2030 welfare states throughout Europe (including Belgium) will face the long-term implications of the babyboom and subsequent babybust in the latter part of the 20th century: the large cohorts of the 1950s and 1960s will gradually enter retirement, while the small cohorts born since the mid 1970s are not sufficiently large to offset the shrinking labour force. The 2001 report of the United Nations on replacement migration estimated that a significant increase of migration (compared to levels of the mid 1990s) would be required to maintain the size of the working age population in Europe. In contrast to expectations and despite wide scepticism regarding to the UN migration prospects, immigration has substantially increased throughout Europe since the early 2000s, exceeding the migration volumes of the 1950s and 1960s by a considerable margin. However, throughout Europe the employment levels of migrant populations are significantly lower than is the case among natives, fuelling scepticism in the public debate with respect to replacement migration. Although the overrepresentation of second and later generation migrants in unemployment has been documented repeatedly, as well as the overrepresentation of first generation migrants in social assistance, only a limited body of work has hitherto been able to access existing register data to address the uptake and impact of active labour market programmes (ALMP's) and (labour force) integration policies on labour market outcomes for first and second generation migrants. This project uses a novel data infrastructure that was developed in a preceding VIONA-project (Flemish Government) which aimed to link longitudinal register data from integration offices, employment offices and social security organisations in order to reconstruct and analyse labour market trajectories of both the resident population with a migration background (second and later generation migrants) and new migrants entering the country in the period 2005-2016 (first generation migrants), including asylum seekers. Given this highly innovative research infrastructure – in tandem with the fact that different migration profiles can be considered - this project will contribute to the scarce literature on the effectiveness of different integration and employment policies to labour market integration of individuals with a migration background, while additionally shedding light on the variation in the effectiveness of such policies for different migrant groups as the barriers that second and later generation migrants, first generation migrants (e.g. family formation and reunification) and asylum seekers face in entering the labour market are different. The project aims to continue the collaboration with the various regional stakeholders involved in the construction of the data-infrastructure and envisages the valorisation of the research findings in collaboration with local and regional actors in the field of labour market and integration policies." "The social re-integration of prisoners in Flemish Community." "Peter Raeymaeckers" "Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change" "This project represents a formal research agreement between UA and on the other hand the Flemish Government. UA provides the research results mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions as stipulated in this contract" "Too wrapped up? On the effects of red tape on collaborative innovation." "Koen Verhoest" "Politics & Public Governance" "Collaboration with external stakeholders such as businesses, non-profit organizations, interest groups and citizens continues to manifest itself as an important vehicle for public sector innovation. Red tape, or burdensome rules and procedures that negatively affect performance, is known as a crucial barrier to the effective functioning of public organisations (Bozeman, 1993). While research indicates that red tape hampers innovation as well as collaboration, red tape is rarely included in research into conditions for collaborative innovation specifically. It is still unclear through which mechanisms red tape affects collaborative innovation, and which aspects of collaborative innovation (such as the set-up of the collaboration, its sustainment, or its innovative success) are hindered by red tape. Therefore this project proposes a two phased-research. In the first explorative stage the complex dynamics between red tape and collaborative innovation are studied qualitatively and in depth in five comparative cases in the social policy sector. In the second stage the findings from the first stage are tested by conducting a survey among managers of the highest and second highest hierarchical level of 44 public organizations (departments and agencies). This survey is processed using multilevel regression analysis. This PhD scholarship from the Flemish Research Council is awarded to Charlotte Van Dijck (KULeuven), with Koen Verhoest (UAntwerpen) as co-promoter. In line with its focus on collaborative innovation, this application is a collaboration between KULeuven (promoter Trui Steen) and the Research Group on Politics & Public Governance, University of Antwerp (co-promoter Koen Verhoest). The financial resources are allocated to the main institution (KULeuven). The research is closely linked to the interuniversity project on public sector innovation through collaboration PSI-CO as coordinated by Koen Verhoest (UAntwerpen)." "The working alliance between probation officers and probationers in the field of community supervision: a mixed-methods approach." "Peter Raeymaeckers" "Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change, Centre on Inequality, Poverty, Social Exclusion and the City" "How society should deal with people who commit criminal acts is a question that has been asked for centuries. A recent evolution in Belgium and other European countries is to submit more offenders to alternative sanctions or measures. This means that they are not imprisoned, but placed under supervision and guidance while remaining part of society. Social work has traditionally been involved with implementing alternative sanctions and measures. Although these new forms of punishment are increasingly applied, academic research on the way supervision and guidance of offenders in the community is organized, is relatively scarce. Moreover, what actually happens in the practice of community supervision is still a 'black box': we don't know much about what practitioners actually do. However, one thing we do know from research, is that a good working relationship between practitioners and offenders forms a crucial element in the success of the supervision process. That is why it is important to know how this working relationship takes shape, how it develops over time and whether it can be positively influenced. These questions are the core of my doctoral research. By looking at the practice of community supervision in different ways (using observations, interviews and questionnaires), I contribute to the development of knowledge in a field that has remained underexposed in academic research." "New Authority in the Neighbourhood" "Peter Raeymaeckers" "Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change, Centre on Inequality, Poverty, Social Exclusion and the City" "This project represents a formal research agreement between UA and on the other hand the EMMAUS. UA provides the research results mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions as stipulated in this contract"