My research focuses on tobacco control, specifically on the question how policies at the national, local, and organizational level can prevent smoking initiation and effectively facilitate smoking cessation. I aim to understand what the effects of different tobacco control policies are and how they do or do not work. A central question in my work is how policies may help in reducing the large socioeconomic inequalities in smoking that many countries are facing.

With our research, I aim to contribute to the ambition for a smoke-free Netherlands (the 2040 Smokefree Generation goal) by providing high quality scientific evidence. I advise and work with stakeholders in tobacco control policy practice, to achieve a more direct societal impact.

The projects that I lead use quantitative and qualitative methods to both quantify policy impact and to understand how policies work, often from the perspectives of the target group and various other stakeholders. I have extensive experience evaluating natural policy experiments, and I have applied innovative methodology including elements of geographical analysis, systems science, developmental evaluation, and participatory methods.

Tobacco control, smoking, policy evaluation, prevention, public health, epidemiology