The Julius Center is focusing increasingly on national and international collaboration both in its scientific and educational activities. The Center aims to establish more extensive long-term structural partnerships with strategically selected high-quality academic institutions in many different countries. These contacts will play an important role in the Julius Center’s ambition to stay at the forefront of international scientific research and education in health care.
Research
The Julius Center has a formalized link with the interfacultary Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences (IRAS), environmental and occupational epidemiology at Utrecht University. The Center also collaborates with other epidemiological research groups at Utrecht University which is further strengthened by the designation of “Epidemiology” as one of the key research themes of Utrecht University. The Center works closely together with the National Institute for Public health and the Environment by shared appointments of staff and combined databases.
The fact that we cherish our stimulating and productive international research collaborations is clearly reflected in an increasing number of high level affiliations of staff members of the Julius Center with prestigious academic institutes abroad such as Imperial College, London, George Institute for International health, Australia, and many other, and in our participation in the Academic Alliance for Clinical Trials (AACT). The AACT is an academic contract research organization with a focus on interaction between the pharmaceutical industry and academic investigators to promote high-quality innovative phase III and phase IV clinical trials. The Alliance builds upon an existing network of clinics and health care centers on five continents.
Education
The majority of educational programs are provided in co-operation with other divisions within or outside the University Medical Center Utrecht and with institutes in other countries.
In recent years, teaching programs were started in Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan to enhance the participation of medical doctors and clinical researchers in high impact (inter)national applied clinical research. In addition to this, the University Hospital Cipto Mangunkusomo in Jakarta (Indonesia), the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Oxford University (UK) and the University Medical Center Utrecht (the Netherlands) have joined forces to establish the necessary platform for a durable improvement in clinical epidemiological teaching and research in Asia. Other fruitful international education collaborations exist with African countries (pertaining to vocational primary care programs) and with Kaiser Permanante in the US.