Local Residents Research Their Own Problems

People with a lower socioeconomic status often struggle with their health. This can lead to more stress and new health problems. Clustered socioeconomic and health problems are also known as syndemic vulnerability. The research project 'Countering Syndemic Vulnerability', which is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and ZonMw and is a partnership between Health Campus The Hague, Leiden University, The Hague University of Applied Sciences and University of Applied Sciences Leiden, aims to address this clustering of problems by helping communities become more resilient. Project leader Matty Crone and researcher Marieke Breed explain how.

Matty, the team wants to develop a 'resilience method'. What is that?

'The concept comes from America. It views syndemics in communities as a disaster, and the whole community needs to prepare for disasters: from citizens to agencies to policymakers. To do so, you need to know where exactly the problems lie. And professionals have to know how to respond to these problems and how best the different agencies can work together. Then you as a community develop ways to deal with clustered problems. That process is what we are hoping to develop in our research. We are doing so in two communities: Moerwijk in The Hague and Stevenshof in Leiden.'

Marieke, you started work on this in Moerwijk, The Hague in 2023. How did you go about that?

'We are using a hybrid of data analysis and participatory research. A first data analysis showed that many single parents in Moerwijk suffer from clustered problems. We asked some of those parents to participate in our research, as what we term 'neighbourhood researchers.' We worked with them to pinpoint the problems faced by single parents. What we saw was that many members of this group had negative childhood experiences. These could be financial problems, domestic violence, partner violence or stalking: awful experiences.

The problems accumulate as their lives progress. If they break up with their partner and suddenly need another house, single parents who are on a lower income or already have multiple problems are more likely to end up in Moerwijk because the rents there are lower or because they get priority for housing there. But they don't know many people there. Nor do they dare ask the authorities or service providers for help because they have often had bad experiences with that. Things begin to spiral and they develop more health problems than they already had, such as chronic stress, muscle or joint pain or signs of depression.'

You now have a better grasp of the problems in this group in Moerwijk. What is the next step?

Marieke: 'That's a difficult one. We have developed a good relationship with the neighbourhood researchers. What we need now is to get other service providers or authorities on board to see how we can help them. But the authorities are the group that parents often do not trust. So we are thinking about ways to improve the relationship between residents and the authorities. Ultimately, we want all single parents to receive the support they need, so we can tackle their problems and prevent them from happening again.'

Have the single parents already noticed any impact from this project?

Matty: 'We don't yet have concrete solutions to their psychological and physical problems. It's too soon for that. But single parents in the neighbourhood know how to find us and have seen that we really do listen to them, that we are working on their problems. They say that this alone gives them breathing space.'

The Countering Syndemic Vulnerability project will run until August 2026. The research is part of the Health Campus The Hague and Leiden University 'Population Health Management Living Lab The Hague' interdisciplinary research programme.

Banner photo: Hannah Busing/Unsplash