In the Netherlands, approximately 1 million children (0-25 years) have a chronic disease. Above and beyond the ever-present challenges of growing up with an illness, these children have 40% chance to develop psychological problems, including depression, anxiety and loneliness. Throughout their life, this translates into decreased well-being and reduced social participation and generates additional costs for society. Early prevention of psychological problems is thus key to break this vicious cycle. Therefore, eHealth applications are promising. However, scientific knowledge is missing and validated tools are not yet available for this group and involved health care professionals. Our mission is to make scientifically validated eHealth tools that allow personalized and trans-diagnostic prevention of psychological problems widely available for this highly vulnerable group of chronically ill children and future adults, through an accessible, user-friendly, safe, and sustainable platform. To succeed in this mission, we present an iterative learning cycle approach in two four-year phases during which we gather the insights, and develop, evaluate, and implement the much needed eHealth tools: I. Development: Distil and validate the theoretical and game-design factors that make eHealth effective for chronically ill children. II. Evaluation: Evaluate trans-diagnostic and personalized eHealth tools for chronically ill children, using and developing state-of-the-art methods. III. Implementation: Study and remove the barriers that currently hinder implementation and uptake, and threaten availability of eHealth applications for chronically ill children. Our eHealth junior consortium includes (applied) researchers, pediatricians, psychiatrists, psychologists, patient organizations, knowledge centers, game designers, industrial designers, insurance companies, and business professionals. We will collaborate with the end-users (children, families, and professionals) in order to achieve both international scientific breakthroughs and optimal clinical and societal impact. Knowledge utilization is a crucial part of our project.

Recent technical developments present new ways to track and reflect upon behaviours related to a healthier lifestyle. For example, individuals can use their smart phones or other interactive devices to measure and alter physical activity or dietary choices. In the proposed project, a recently developed wearable camera is used to gather information on factors that could trigger one?s alcohol use. By doing so, we will set the first step in testing the extent to which lifelogging (the process of tracking personal data generated by own behavioural activities) can be used as input for tailor-made applications to reduce alcohol use. Exposure to alcohol-related cues (e.g., alcohol marketing) has been associated with individual?s drinking levels (i.e., cue-reactivity) in controlled lab settings. Little is known about how cue-reactivity affects individual?s drinking in every-day life contexts. The current project examines the potential value of a wearable automatic camera that unobtrusively captures a picture every 30 seconds, to assess cue-reactivity outside the laboratory. The use of this innovative product makes it possible to follow the user throughout the day and potentially capture the cues that could trigger alcohol consumption. The aim is to examine whether we could establish correlations between alcohol-related cues and subsequent drinking behaviour in ecological-valid settings, providing evidence on the effectiveness of wearable technology to assess cue-reactivity. If cue-reactivity is established, this information will lay foundation for larger collaborative research grants in which wearable technology is used to track and alter one?s substance use related behaviours.

Administrative or routinely collected data can be used to predict outcomes, assess the (cost-)effectiveness of treatments, and build tools that support personalized, high quality, effective and efficient care for mental health disorders. Aim of the event is 1) to broaden the expertise of the existing group , and 2) to generate innovative research ideas using routine data for personalised care.

Juvenile delinquency is a significant problem in our society. In forensic practice, we focus on treatment of juvenile delinquents, in order to reduce the risk of recidivism. Unfortunately, interventions are not yet effective for all forenisc youth. We believe this can be improved by taking into account the neurobiological development of youth. Therefore, in this project we will investigate how the individual neurobiological development of juvenile delinquentsis related to their psychosocial development and the effectiveness of treatment. With this knowledge, we can apply existing forensic interventions and adolescent criminal law more effectively.

A zeitgeist has emerged in the medical and educational fields for applied games as learning tools, and the mental health field is primed for a similar revolution; however, validated games for mental health are virtually nonexistent. What is critical at this early stage of innovation is to develop a rigorous theoretical framework that can offer best practices recommendations for both the research and implementation of games for mental health. Our aim is to address this conspicuous gap with the proposed program of research. We have developed a multidisciplinary research, development and dissemination (RD&D) model (Figure 1) that we propose is crucial at this early stage in order to establish best practices for games for mental health. We propose to focus on the development and evaluation of games that target the two most serious mental health problems in youth today: anxiety and depression. Anxiety disorders are the most frequently diagnosed mental health problem in youth and the earliest to emerge among all forms of psychopathology, affecting up to 17% of children and adolescents. Likewise, depression is one of the three leading causes of global disease burden for young people aged 10 to 24 years; up to 20-24% of youths will experience a major depressive disorder by the time they reach the age of 18. This proposal aims to use insights from evidence-based clinical practice and theoretical models to develop, and rigorously test, the effectiveness of two immersive, interactive games that help children and adolescents overcome feelings of anxiety and depression.