The Health Equity Advancement Lab in Ghent (HEALinG) aims at building awareness and fostering understanding of health inequities, as well as offering insights and skills to advance health liberation and equitable (health)care.

The Health Equity Advancement Lab in Ghent investigates social determinants (e.g., verbal and non-verbal caregiving behaviors, social exclusion, stigmatization) and psychological processes (e.g., empathy, emotion, biased beliefs and attitudes, injustice appraisals and expectancies) underlying health outcomes across a variety of domains, including physical health, mental health, and social well-being. Our work also focuses on identifying protective and noxious factors that may modulate the impact of interpersonal dynamics (including caregiving inequities) and facilitate or hamper the well-being of marginalized and stigmatized groups. Research is conducted among clinical and non-clinical child and adult populations with a particular focus on understanding and targeting health inequities (most notably in the field of pain). We employ both experimental and non-experimental (e.g., observational, qualitative) approaches within lab-based settings, clinical encounters, daily and work contexts.

Our research is informed by social, clinical, and health psychology and is strongly rooted in an affective-motivational understanding of interpersonal dynamics in human encounters. Our activities are further grounded and guided by engagement from patient and public partners, patient advocates, and community stakeholders. We particularly aim to close the gap between research and practice: (1) by fostering collaboration among researchers, clinicians, and community members, (2) by implementing acquired empirical knowledge into clinical practice, and (3) through performing community services aimed at engaging, informing, and training others (including e.g., students, (health care) professionals and policymakers) in equity-informed research and inclusive care.