Creating Healthy Dental Habits

The ORAHabit project developed and tested a 15-minute intervention to promote tooth-picking among young adults. The results show that this simple, habit-based approach effectively instilled new oral hygiene routines, with high adherence and increasing automaticity. Next steps include scaling the intervention within diverse populations and digital healthcare settings.

Reimagining Care Spaces through Art

The ArtiC project at OLVG Hospital collaborated with artists and caregivers to reimagine emergency department environments. Rather than treating art as decoration, the team integrated it into the care ecology, offering hospital staff moments of calm, identity, and reflection in high-stress settings. The project shows that art can be a meaningful component of healthcare design and staff well-being.

Unpacking the Health Costs of Time

This project explored how families navigate tensions between biological and social time—like sleep schedules versus work hours—and how these “temporal practices” impact health and stress. Using interdisciplinary methods and even AI, the team introduced a novel framework for understanding how time shapes well-being, especially in caregiving contexts.

Memory, Identity & Health – AIDS, Minority Stress & Dutch Gay Men

Looking at the long-term psychological effects of the 1980s HIV/AIDS crisis, this project combined archival research with survivor interviews. It sheds light on how collective trauma continues to shape mental health and self-esteem among gay men today.

These seed projects show that small, innovative initiatives can yield deep insights—and pave the way for further research for healthier futures.