Team | UCLouvain

Team

Senior members : Stephan Van Den Broucke, Stefan Agrigoroaei
Junior members : Valérie Broers, Gaëtan Devos, Jyoshma Dsouza, Sarah Fakroune, Pierre Gérain, Elise Grimm, Sandrine Roussel, Mónica Suárez Reyes, Gelsomina Salvia, Jessica Vandenbosch

Stefan Agrigoroaei

Stefan Agrigoroaei is an assistant professor in psychology and aging at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL). He completed his doctoral degree in psychology at the University of Savoie Mont Blanc, Chambéry, France. Before joining the UCL in 2014 he worked at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA, as a postdoctoral research fellow and as an assistant director of the Lifespan Developmental Psychology Laboratory, with Professor Margie Lachman. While at Brandeis, he was involved in multiple research projects using data from the MIDUS (Midlife in the United States) national longitudinal study and BOLOS (Boston Longitudinal Study). He also had teaching responsibilities at Brandeis and in the Department of Gerontology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Stefan Agrigoroaei approaches his research with an interdisciplinary and lifespan perspective. His general research program is in the area of health and aging, with a focus on examining the contribution of psychosocial (e.g., socioeconomic status, sources of disparities, control beliefs), behavioral (e.g., physical and cognitive activities), and stress-related factors (e.g., cortisol response) for optimizing and maintaining good cognitive and physical health as people age. His projects involve a wide range of cognitive and physical health assessments, including biomedical indicators, in both surveys and laboratory settings.

Keywords: healthy aging, lifespan development, normal cognitive aging, control beliefs, health disparities, resilience, stress and cognitive assessment, frailty

Website: http://www.uclouvain.be/stefan.agrigoroaei

Selected publications:

Agrigoroaei, S., & Lachman, M.E. (2011). Cognitive Functioning in Midlife and Old Age: Combined Effects of Psychosocial and Behavioral Factors. The Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 66B(S1), i130–i140,
DOI: 10.1093/geronb/gbr017
Agrigoroaei, S., Neupert, S.D. & Lachman, M.E. (2013) Maintaining a Sense of Control in the Context of Cognitive Challenge: Greater Stability in Control Beliefs Benefits Working Memory, The Journal of Gerontopsychology and Geriatric Psychiatry, 26, 49-59, DOI: 10.1024/1662-9647/a000078
Agrigoroaei, S., Polito, M., Lee, A., Kranz-Graham, E., Seeman, T., & Lachman, M.E. (2013) Cortisol Response to Challenge Involving Low Controllability: The Role of Control Beliefs and Age, Biological Psychology, 93, 138-142,
DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2013.01.003
Turiano, N.A., Chapman, B.P., Agrigoroaei, S., Infurna, F.J. & Lachman, M.E. (2014). Perceived Control Reduces Mortality Risk at Low, not High, Education Levels, Health Psychology, 33, 883-890, DOI: 10.1037/hea0000022
Agrigoroaei, S., Attardo, A. L., & Lachman, M. E. (2017). Stress and subjective age: Those with greater financial stress look older. Research on Aging, 39, 1075-1099 doi:10.1177/0164027516658502
Philippot, P., & Agrigoroaei, S. (2017). Repetitive thinking, executive functioning, and depressive mood in the elderly. Aging & Mental Health, 21, 1192-1196. doi:10.1080/13607863.2016.1211619
Desrichard, O., Vallet, F., Agrigoroaei, S., Fagot, D., & Spini, D. (2018). Frailty in aging and its influence on perceived stress exposure and stress-related symptoms: Evidence from the Swiss Vivre/Leben/Vivere study. European Journal of Ageing, Advanced Online Publication

Stephan Van den Broucke

Stephan Van den Broucke is Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences and the Psychological Sciences Research Institute of the Université Catholique de Louvain. He formerly held the positions of senior expert at the Flemish Institute for Health Promotion (Belgium), project officer at the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers of the European Commission, and Associate Professor at the Department of International Health of Maastricht University (Netherlands). His main research and teaching interest include health psychology, preventive health behavior change, health promotion planning and evaluation, self-management education for chronic disease, health literacy, and public health capacity building. In addition to research in Belgium, Stephan participated as a principal investigator in several large scale international projects, including the European Health Literacy Survey (HLS-EU), Reviewing Public Health Capacities in Europe, Action-For-Health, and IC-Health, and coordinated the EU Diabetes Literacy project. He is an Executive Board Member of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (UHPE), Advisory Board Member of the Asian Health Literacy Association, and President of the Well Done Health Literacy Awards. He is an associate editor of Health Promotion International and editorial board member of Archives of Public Health and Journal of Public Health Research, and has served as an evaluator for research proposals submitted to FNRS (Belgium), ZON-MW (Netherlands), the German Federal Ministry of Research, the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal), the Israel Science Foundation, the Hong Kong Healthcare and Promotion Fund, and the Kuwait Research Foundation. Stephan regularly serves as an adviser for the European Commission and the World Health Organization.

Selected publications:

Van den Broucke, S. (2017). Strengthening public health capacity through a health promotion lens. Health Promotion International, 32(5), 763-767.
Vandenbosch, J., Van den Broucke, S., Vancorenland, S., Avalosse, H., Verniest, R., & Callens, M. (2016). Health literacy and the use of healthcare services in Belgium. J Epidemiol Community Health, 70(10), 1032-1038.
Van den Broucke, S. (2014). Health literacy: a critical concept for public health. Archives of Public Health, 72(1), 10.
Van den Broucke, S., Van der Zanden, G., Chang, P., Doyle, G., Levin, D., Pelikan, J., ... & Riemenschneider, H. (2014). Enhancing the effectiveness of diabetes self-management education: the diabetes literacy project. Hormone and Metabolic Research, 46(13), 933-938.
Sørensen, K., Van den Broucke, S., Fullam, J., Doyle, G., Pelikan, J., Slonska, Z., & Brand, H. (2012). Health literacy and public health: a systematic review and integration of definitions and models. BMC public health, 12(1), 80.
Van Daele, T., Van Audenhove, C., Hermans, D., Van den Bergh, O., & Van den Broucke, S. (2012). Empowerment implementation: enhancing fidelity and adaptation in a psycho-educational intervention. Health promotion international, 29(2), 212-222.

Valérie Broers

Valérie Broers, PhD at the Université Catholique de Louvain, working on the Food4Gut project. She obtained her Bachelor Social Psychology and Research Master Social and Health Psychology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her master thesis focused on self-regulation failure in the form of bedtime procrastination. Her current project involves both public health and psychological aspects. The Food4Gut is a multidisciplinary project that focuses on the impact of “prebiotics” vegetables rich in Inulin-type fructans targeting the intestinal micro biota. The public health aspect aims to strengthen the behavioural epidemiological database of food behaviour in Wallonia. The psychological aspect aims to implement interventions to increase prebiotic vegetable choice with the help of nudging.

Keywords: food choice, nudging, self-regulation

Publication:

Broers, V. J., De Breucker, C., Van den Broucke, S., & Luminet, O. (2017). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of nudging to increase fruit and vegetable choice. The European Journal of Public Health, 27(5), 912-920.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Valerie_Broers
https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/en/search/site/Broers?f%5B0%5D=sm_creator%3ABroers%2C%20Val%C3%A9rie

Jyoshma Preema D Souza

Jyoshma Preema D Souza is a PhD student at Psychological Sciences Research Institute of the Université Catholique de Louvain working on Public Health- ‘Determinants of Cervical Cancer Screening participation in India’. She pursued her Bachelors in Nursing and Masters in Public Health from Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India and has worked collaboratively with the Indian Government as an Epidemiologist, assisting in Disease Surveillance under the National Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP). She has been a member of the District Rapid Response Team and was actively involved in the outbreak investigation and control.

Her contribution to the Non-Communicable Disease Prevention Project (NCD), an initiative of the District Health and Family Welfare Department of the State Government as The Project Coordinator enhanced her experience in Planning, supervision and monitoring of the project that aimed at screening and management of Diabetes, Hypertension and Cervical Cancer of individuals in a large scale. She has provided assistance to District Nodal officer for District Health Action Plan- 2017 and was actively involved in the supervision of Pulse Polio Immunization and Measles campaign initiated by the Government of India in the District of Dakshina Kannada.

Apart from the practical experiences in Public Health, she has worked extensively on Health Literacy. She has a passion for music and art. She uses her Public health field exposure and research experience as an asset to address Public Health issues.

Areas of Interest: Health Literacy, Cervical cancer screening, Implementation Research, Health promotion

Few of her research publications are:

Chauhan, A., Narayanan, P., & D'souza, J. (2017). Improving maternal health quality: reviewing the context and consequences. Indian Journal of Community Health, 29(2), 134-141.
Rao, R., Vittaldas, R., & Dsouza, J. P. (2017). Incidence of Dogbite in Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka: An Epidemiological assessment from 2009 to 2016. Indian Journal of Community Health, 29(3), 282-286.
Dsouza, Jyoshma P., Sherpa, Mingma., Nayak, Mamtha., Chauhan Anshul (2017) Prevalence of congenital anomaly in a tertiary care hospital in coastal Karnataka: a three year Retrospective study. Int J Recent Sci Res.8(12), 22289-22291

Elise Grimm

Elise Grimm is a Teaching Assistant and PhD candidate at the Psychological Sciences Research Institute of the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. She graduated from the University of York, United Kingdom, with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. She then completed her Master in Psychological Sciences at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, which incorporated a semester of study at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.

Her research interests focus on executive functioning and stress-related processes. Her current work examines the moderating role of executive functioning on stress processes, both at the physiological and subjective level. She is also drawn to the influence of cognitive mediators, such as repetitive thoughts and appraisal.

In addition, she has been involved in several other projects spanning these topics. Her undergraduate dissertation explored whether the bilingual executive skills advantage in younger adults extended to their mathematical training. She then studied the feasibility and effectiveness of a group executive functioning training in adolescents suffering from emotional disorders for her master thesis. Finally, she recently collaborated on a research project investigating the interactive, protective effects of both executive functioning and physical activity on allostatic load biomarkers in a national longitudinal sample of younger, middle-aged, and older adults.

Keywords: executive functioning, stress processes, cognition, repetitive thinking

Sarah Fakroune

Sarah Fakroune is a research assistant at the Université Catholique de Louvain, working on the evaluation of local CMP-MFO (for Concertation médico-pharmaceutique and Medisch-farmaceutisch overleg) project from INAMI-RIZIV initiative. She holds a Bachelor and a Master degree in Psychological Sciences and, obtained another Master degree in Sociology and Anthropology at Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. Currently, her work consists of the evaluation and improvement of the implementation of the local CMP-MFO projects, joint study with University of Antwerp and the KULeuven. Furthermore, she is also studying sleep quality and sleep hygiene of Belgian students, more particularly, the health determinants of their sleep behaviors thanks to the application of the Theory of Planned Behavior from Ajzen (1985).

Keywords: CMP-MFO, evaluation, implementation, sleep hygiene, planned behavior

Sandrine Roussel

Sandrine Roussel is postdoctoral researcher in public health psychology at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium. She has an academic background both in social/occupational psychology and in public health. Her professional career has led her to become interested in the dynamics of change and their evaluation in many sectors (rural development, early childhood care, socio-professional integration and health education). She has specialized for the past ten years in Health Promotion and Public Health policy, with a particular focus on health professionals, their representations/beliefs and their educational practices. She currently coordinates the CARE-TEST project and supervises the evaluation of the medical-pharmaceutical consult implementation.

https://uclouvain.be/fr/repertoires/sandrine.roussel
https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/search/site/?f[0]=sm_creator:%22Roussel,%20Sandrine%22

Main interests and research domains: patient education, medical and health profession education, chronic disease prevention and management, physician-pharmacist collaboration

Methods: mixed method with a focus on qualitative approach, participatory approach (as a research object and as a research method, where relevant).

Publications:

Roussel S, Deccache A, Frenay M. Oscillation between identities and Subjective psychological health objectives among an informed audience in Therapeutic patient education. Ther Patient Educ. 2018 ; 10(1):10202. https://doi.org/10.1051/tpe/2018006
Roussel S, Deccache A. Représentations variées des concepts en Education Thérapeutique du Patient chez les professionnels de soins : Réflexions et Perspectives. Educ Ther Patient. 2012;4(2):401-8. https://doi.org/10.1051/tpe/2012010
Decleire C, Burnay N, Derycke H, Braeckman L, Vlerick P, Roussel S, et al. Rester ou quitter? Lorsque les conditions de travail s'en-mêlent. In: Marquet Jacques MNeHN, editor. Corps soignant, corps soigné Les soins infirmiers : de la formation à la profession. Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia-L’Harmattan; 2013.
Roussel S, Deccache A. Améliorer la participation aux programmes organisés de dépistage du cancer du sein et du cancer colorectal » mis en place par la communauté française de Belgique. Conclusions et recommandations-clés à l’issue de la recherche. Santé pour Tous. 2012;8(6):6-10.

Mónica Suárez Reyes

Mónica Suárez Reyes is PhD student at Psychological Sciences Research Institute and the Faculty of Public Health at the Université catholique de Louvain. She obtained a Master degree in Nutrition and Health Promotion in the University of Chile in Chile. Her research is focused on Health Promotion and Healthy Setting Approach. Her thesis aims to understand the role of universities as a Health Promoting Setting, specifically by describing the implementation process of the Health Promoting University (HPU) initiative in different contexts. The project includes a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches and a collaborative work between universities from different countries. This project is funded by the Chilean government through the BecasChile program.

Key words: Healthy setting, healthy university

Publication:
Suárez-Reyes M, Van den Broucke S (2016). Implementing the Health Promoting University approach in culturally different contexts. Glob Health Promot 23, 46–56

Jessica Vandenbosch

Jessica Vandenbosch holds a master degree in psychological sciences obtained in 2016 at the Université catholique de Louvain. Her master thesis focused on nutritional behaviors, food labels and the risk of counterproductive effects of simplifying nutrition-related information for consumers. Throughout her master studies as a research intern, she had been involved in different research projects under the supervision of Stephan Van den Broucke. These projects were mainly related to health literacy, a concept referring to individuals’ knowledge and skills to access, understand, and critically assess health information from various sources in order to apply them and make informed health-related decisions to maintain or improve their health and quality of life. She had collaborated on the Diabetes literacy project (2012-2015), funded as part of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program for Research (FP7), that aimed to assess the effectiveness (and cost-effectiveness) of different type of diabetes self-management education programs and the moderating role of health literacy. Another project was in collaboration with the health insurance fund Mutualité chrétienne and aimed to investigate the relationship between health literacy and the use of healthcare services in Belgium. Since her graduation, she has been working on a research project in collaboration with the first psoriasis day care centre in Wallonia (Clinique Sainte-Elisabeth, CHU-UCL Namur). This project aimed at assessing the effects of the care received by psoriatic patients with regards to their satisfaction, health literacy level, disease knowledge, and their quality of life. Currently, she is working as a research assistant at the University catholique de Louvain as part of the European project IC-Health “Improving digital health literacy in Europe”. This project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, aims at creating a series of online courses to help European citizens to search and find accurate and reliable health information on the Internet, in order to make appropriate health-related decisions and be more empowered in their health self-management. For instance, IC-Health’s online courses provide guidelines on how and where to find relevant and reliable health information online, how to effectively use search engines and sort the results obtained, how to assess the reliability of health information and how to distinguish accurate information from misleading, false or commercially oriented information.

Main interests and research domains: health literacy, digital health literacy, online health information seeking behaviors, critical thinking regarding online health information, self-management of chronic diseases (e.g., diabetes)

Publications:

Vandenbosch, J., Broucke, S. V. den, Schinckus, L., Schwarz, P., Doyle, G., Pelikan, J., … Terkildsen-Maindal, H. (2018). The impact of health literacy on diabetes self-management education. Health Education Journal, 0, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/0017896917751554
Vandenbosch, J., Van den Broucke, S., Vancorenland, S., Avalosse, H., Verniest, R., & Callens, M. (2016) Health Literacy and the Use of Healthcare Services in Belgium. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 0, 1–7. doi:10.1136/jech-2015-206910
Vandenbosch, J., Van den Broucke, S., Vancorenland, S., Avalosse, H., Verniest, R., & Callens, M. Health Literacy and the Use of Healthcare Services in Belgium: Results from a National Survey. Oral presentation at the 3rd European Health Literacy Conference, 18th November 2015, Brussels, Belgium.