Meet our new member: Defactum – Interview with Camilla Palmhøj Nielsen and Thomas Maribo
EUREGHA is excited to introduce another New Member to Our Network 🌟
As part of our commitment to fostering strong regional health collaboration, we are delighted to welcome Defactum as a new full member of EUREGHA!
In a special welcome interview, we had the pleasure of speaking with Camilla Palmhøj Nielsen, Research Director, DEFACTUM and associate professor at Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, and Thomas Maribo, Research Director, DEFACTUM and professor at Department of Public Health, Aarhus University; to explore their vision, expertise, and how TrentinoSalute4.0 will contribute to our network. You can find the full interview below!
EUREGHA continues to grow, and we look forward to introducing more new members to our expanding community in the coming months. Stay tuned for more updates!
Please introduce DEFACTUM briefly.
DEFACTUM is part of the Central Denmark Region in Denmark. We function as a research and consultancy unit focusing on health, social affairs, and employment. Our work is interdisciplinary and data-driven, ensuring that our projects and initiatives are based on robust evidence, user involvement, and close collaboration with practitioners. We strive to enhance the quality and cohesion of welfare services for the benefit of citizens, professionals, and society at large.
Regional health policies enacted by the Department of Health and Social Policies support the development of integrated models of health and social care to provide excellent clinical services. A key strategy is the development of smart ICT solutions through collaborations between the healthcare sector, academia, research organizations, and companies. The Autonomous Province of Trento is acknowledged as a national leader in innovation, particularly in electronic health records and user-centered e-health applications.
Furthermore, the Trentino Health ecosystem is based on the Provincial Law on Health (n.16/2010), which defines health as a fundamental right of citizens and a primary goal for the entire community. It promotes research, innovation, and management experimentation as strategic levers for developing the local healthcare system. Additionally, it emphasizes a strong commitment to digital health and the continuous development of skills and training for healthcare professionals.
What is DEFACTUM’s role in the Central Denmark Region?
As a regional institution, DEFACTUM supports stakeholders by conducting research, evaluations, user surveys, quality development initiatives, and offering implementation support. We generate evidence-based analyses and recommendations that help regional and municipal decision-makers within health and social care. Our projects range from large-scale population-based studies to targeted interventions for specific groups.
What are your key focus areas and expertise?
This can of course be seen through different lenses. The scope is primarily, prevention, rehabilitation and health services research. That of course covers a number of areas and methods from implementation research, developing interventions, organisational studies, health care work force, policy, mental health, psychiatry etc. We do applied research, so we work with patients, health care professionals, next of kin, municipalities, hospitals, GPs and many others. We believe that two of our main strengths are our ability to collaborate across the sector with all relevant actors and our interdisciplinary team that are not afraid to interact to get the best from qualitative and quantitative methods to get the best result.
We have strong competences in SSH research in health which is often sought after in European projects. And finally, because we are part of the region, we are not afraid of working with policy and policymakers and engage in turning our research into policy recommendations.
Right now, a larger reform of the health care system in Denmark is being implemented, much of which is in the areas we focus on, so we are heavily involved in that work in different ways, and it will of course shape our work the coming years.
Why did you join EUREGHA, and what motivates you to be a member?
We see EUREGHA as a vital platform for knowledge exchange and collaboration across European regions. Truth be told, as a small regional research centre outside the university, we are often the odd one out in a Danish context. Therefore, having a European network of like-minded organisations is of great value to us. More specifically, operating at the interface of research, practice, and policy we look forward to sharing our expertise and experiences with European partners, learning from best practices emerging from different regions and authorities, participating in the working groups and joint projects, conferences, and workshops that address shared health and social challenges. We believe that will strengthen DEFACTUM’s international profile while bringing new insights and perspectives back to the Central Denmark Region.
It is also no secret that as a research centre we rely on external research funding, and we hope to join other members in European research projects.
How do you envisage contributing to the EUREGHA community?
Right now, we still figuring things out, but from the top of our heads I would say sharing our research findings, analyses, and hands-on experiences in working groups and events. We publish a lot reports, articles, and presentations that we hope can inspire other network members. Earlier we mentioned how we rely on external funding, so we plan to initiate new collaborations and propose joining funding proposals and projects that prioritise cross-national knowledge sharing, co-creations and solutions.
And at some point, we would of course love to host a study visit or an EUREGHA event in the Central Denmark Region to showcase our work on health and social initiatives.
Which current or future initiatives would you like to share with other EUREGHA members?
On European level we are currently involved in two projects, IDERHA (funded by IHI), and KORALE (funded by Interreg Europe). IDERHA is about health data and policy, and we co-lead the work package on policy recommendations. KORALE is about tackling loneliness. Other EUREGHA members participate in this project where we in Central Denmark Region look at young people and loneliness.
We are also running two strategic research programmes funded by our region. One is on what we call ‘health proximity’, where we look at models of care, policy, organisation etc around a local health system, while also asking what we mean by local and proximity at all. The other programme focuses on social inequality in health, where we soon hope to be able to share some work we think could be relevant to other members. With that programme were also running a session at Health Forum Gastein this year and hope to see other EUREGHA members there.
Apart from those topics we’re also working with some members on health work force, where we have done some research on retention of nurses, and as a curiosum we can mention that we do qualitative research on forensic psychiatry.
What are your long-term ambitions for strengthening the European dimension of your work?
This is still new to us, but as an initial thought we hope to position Central Denmark Region as a key player in health innovation and welfare development within Europe, promote shared solutions to the shared European health and social issues through research, knowledge exchange, and collaborative networks, and showcases regions as key players in the European research and innovation ecosystem. Internally we hope to show our colleagues in other departments and units of Central Denmark Region the benefits of engaging in European collaboration.
Closing Remarks
DEFACTUM looks forward to contributing actively to EUREGHA with our expertise in health promotion, prevention, rehabilitation, social innovation, and cross-sector collaboration. By exchanging ideas and experiences, we hope to both inspire and be inspired, ultimately strengthening the quality and impact of welfare services across Europe.
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