We are pleased to announce that on 14 September 2026, our BRISPO colleague Joachim Gotink successfully defended his PhD.
His thesis, titled "The Anatomy of Inequality. Disentangling Socioeconomic Disparities in Cancer Incidence, Survival, and Mortality", was supervised by prof. dr. Sylvie Gadeyne and dr. Freija Verdoodt.
Congratulations!
About the thesis:
Socioeconomic inequalities in health remain one of the most pressing public health challenges of our time. This dissertation explores socioeconomic inequalities across multiple, related yet distinct cancer outcomes: incidence, post-diagnosis survival, and mortality. Because mortality can be interpreted as the cumulative end result of inequalities in both incidence and survival, a strong emphasis is placed on identifying which of these components drives overall mortality disparities. Additionally, a long-term perspective (1982–2020) is adopted for cancer mortality specifically. The overarching conclusion is that socioeconomic inequalities in cancer outcomes are highly dynamic yet deeply persistent. While varying across cancer types, periods, and demographic groups, these inequalities rarely disappear and remain profoundly entrenched in contemporary Belgium.
