Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (ESHPM) is at the start of a very exciting time. An international review panel concluded that ESHPM research (2013-2018) is excellent, and as a result, ESHPM expects additional (and structural) funding in 2023 going forward. In July, the Management Team and Board jointly decided to develop a multi-annual investment agenda. The scale and scope of this agenda is unique; it has and never will happen again that we will be allocated such a significant additional budget.
Through a bottom-up process, covering all research groups, we installed four working groups who then were requested to develop bold and ambitious plans for four themes, chosen to reflect in response on global challenges that we are facing:
- Planetary Health, which aims to address the healthcare consequences of global warming, such as waste in hospitals and changes in healthcare demand.
- Global Health, which aims to create international impact through research and capacity building for research translation.
- Workforce Challenges, which aims to find and investigate solutions to make healthcare delivery sustainable (40 years ESHPM theme) and address the problem of labor shortage.
- And one enabling theme ‘Data Access and Infrastructure’, scaling up data intensive research at ESHPM, which also follows from a recommendation in the research review in 2021.
Since the four working parties have presented their plans to the MT, we have continued shaping the investment agenda with the Board, Management Team, Professional Services and ESHPM Council. First, we have prepared a more detailed budget estimate for 2023 that includes the investment agenda. The budget has been approved by the Executive Board (CvB). The Executive Board commended ESHPM for such a rich investment agenda that well aligns with the EUR strategy of “making positive societal impact” as well as the Convergence agenda.
In the meantime, the Board, in consensus with the MT, has decided that the new themes be organised as research hubs (neither a different research group nor entirely incorporated in one of the existing research groups) in ESHPM, leveraging core expertise in research groups as well as creating the structure and right incentives to work across sections at School level. Obviously, an investment agenda implies that we will be recruiting additional staff. However, by envisioning the idea of research hubs, we intentionally hope to create dynamic networks, that are inclusive and attractive to existing staff to participate in one of the elected themes.
According to the 2023 budget and our planning, each theme will be given the opportunity to recruit a theme leader and associated staff. The Enabling Data Infrastructure group most likely follows a slightly different implementation plan as this theme aims to leverage our investments with other initiatives, such as ODISSEI, Erasmus Library Services, Erasmus MC Research Suite or Erasmus Centre for Data Analytics.