A national platform for health systems and services research
PhD Students
During the SLHS project, a central focus was the training and support of PhD researchers.
This section showcases the doctoral scholars who contributed to the project, both those who completed their degrees during the program and those who have since become alumni.
Jason Schneck
Jason’s research focuses on applying qualitative methods to observe working conditions in Ticinese nursing homes, and how this relates to the delivery of quality care from the worker’s perspective.The targeted group will be a mixture of nursing home professions in order to represent the diverse nature of care work in these facilities. The study will also draw on secondary source analysis and interviews with relevant stakeholders and informants.
University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland
University of Zurich
Jean Anthony Grand-Guillaume-Perrenoud
Anthony is a social scientist and conducts research on interprofessional collaboration in healthcare, social disadvantage in the perinatal period, and survey instrument development and validation. In his PhD thesis, he is investigating how interprofessional education in undergraduate training of healthcare professionals is linked to attitudes towards interprofessional collaboration and to its practice. The thesis seeks to uncover the mechanisms underlying the effect of interprofessional education and how they may differentially impact professionals with different characteristics and professional backgrounds.
Camilla Sculco
Camilla has background in Public Health and Health Economics. Her research focuses on mental health and utilisation of healthcare services in the pandemic era using a mixed methods approach.
Mike Bacher
Mike's research focusses on the reception of Roman and Canon law in the (late) Middle Ages North of the Alps, using the example of the region of Obwalden and Nidwalden – in particular the local (rural) corporations. The focus is on the question of how modern jurisprudence was received and processed locally in rural Alpine areas. This also under the point of view that a process of becoming a state was initiated, which contributed to the development of the modern state infrastructure, especially in the health sector.
Sophie Karoline Brandt
Sophie's research focuses on the measurement and empirical analysis of health professionals' preferences regarding new models of outpatient primary care. Her focus is on key aspects of interprofessional collaboration, health promotion and the health professionals' innovativeness. Her PhD project includes the design and conduct of an experimental survey among a sample of different health occupations in Switzerland.
Johannes Cordier
Johannes’ research focuses on econometrics and its applications in health economics. In particular, he makes use of machine-learning algorithms to support medical decision making.
Zora Föhn
Zora's research interests revolve around the measurement and the empirical analysis of the Swiss general population’s preferences for current developments in the outpatient primary healthcare. Her research includes the design and conduct of an experimental survey among a representative sample of the Swiss population.
Ji in Kim
Jiin's research focuses on measuring functioning at the population level. She aims to understand Korea's health data to develop a common functioning metric that enables a direct comparison of functioning in different populations, and to identify how functioning trends and their determinants need to be reported to stakeholders.
Selina Barbati
Selina is a pharmacist by training. Her research focuses on how patients implement pharmacotherapy into their daily life, so-called medication adherence. Her PhD project includes the development of a pharmacy consultation with focus on medication adherence.
Eva Hollenstein
Eva’s research explores suicide prevention measures in Switzerland, focusing on interprofessional collaboration and network structures. Her PhD project aims to investigate the role of collaborative practice in five different suicide prevention projects that intend to decrease the number of suicide attempts and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.
Levy Jaeger
Levy’s projects revolve around the FIRE database, which collects information from electronic medical records of several hundred general practitioners across Switzerland (www.fireproject.ch). He aims to explore how clinical routine data can be used to identify unwarranted variation in Swiss primary care.
University of Zurich - Institut für Hausarztmedizin
Abdessalam Ouaazki
Abdes's research interest revolves around the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to improve public mental health and well-being. More specifically, he aims at creating models that explain how multiples variables induce states of negative stress (distress) in humans, along with developing digital interventions for stress management in order to explore/alleviate the impact of stress on mental health.
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University of Neuchâtel
Andreas Plate
University of Zurich
Andreas’ PhD research focused on the quality of care in the prevention and treatment of communicable diseases, with particular emphasis on the role of primary care. It addressed key areas such as infection prevention, vaccination, appropriate antibiotic prescribing, and the management of acute infections. The work highlighted the importance of primary care in delivering effective preventive medicine and treatment, and explored strategies to sustainably improve care for infectious diseases.
Kateryna Riabchenko
Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana SUPSI
Kateryna’s research explores how voluntary health insurance (VHI) affects the Swiss health system. It examines regulations, patterns of use, and the risk that VHI encourages low-value care. It also includes a policy brief with expert views on the future of hospitalization insurance. The goal is to provide evidence that helps policymakers and stakeholders balance the benefits and risks of VHI in Switzerland.
Irene Salvi
University of St. Gallen
The dissertation by Irene Salvi, who joined the SLHS in April 2021 and completed her PhD in May 2025, proposes a framework to enhance value in healthcare—defined as health outcomes per dollar spent—by integrating patient perspectives through patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). Its two pillars are improving quality of care via accurate PROM use and managing costs to optimize resources, aiming to offer insights to balance patient needs with system constraints and improve healthcare efficiency.
Mélanie Stamm
Mélanie’s PhD project aims to identify, define and understand existing economic inefficiencies in the Swiss health care system as well as to determine the potential for efficiency improvement in certain areas. One focus lies on administrative inefficiencies and another on inefficiencies in the emergency department.
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ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften
Manuel Weber
Manuel's PhD projects aim to examine target group-specific lifestyle interventions using technology (focus on physical activity and nutrition). Besides, the potential of digital lifestyle interventions for bridging the transition from a clinical setting (e.g., rehabilitation) to home will be investigated. The target population are oncological patients.
Sophia Werdin
SwissTPH
Sophia's PhD research focused on the implementation and outcomes of suicide prevention measures in Switzerland. It included a cross-sectional survey and an interrupted time series analysis evaluating a regional suicide prevention project, alongside a qualitative study on challenges, gaps, and success factors in suicide prevention across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. This research was complemented by a policy brief promoting the sustainability of suicide prevention projects in Switzerland.
Alessia Raineri
Alessia‘s research focuses on the COVID-19 Pandemic. In her PhD, she explores the exposure of school children and adolescents to SARS-CoV-2 and associated long term consequences such as long Covid.
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University of Zurich (EBPI)
Camille Poroes
Unisanté
Crises can severely disrupt health systems, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland. While the WHO's Health System Performance Assessment (HSPA) now includes resilience for crisis situations, this approach is still emerging and not widely adopted, highlighting the need for updated methods to evaluate the Swiss health system performance during crises. The main objective of my research was to discuss recommendations for improving the assessment of the performance of the Swiss health system in times of crisis.
Ana Beatriz Moreira
University of Lucerne
Beatriz's project provides an overview of functioning information collected in Switzerland for the ageing population and uses it to develop and model a functioning indicator. Drawing on existing data sources, it also describes the functioning of older people, offering a more comprehensive understanding of health that goes beyond morbidity and mortality by reflecting people’s lived experience and ability to function in daily life. Ultimately, the project seeks to inform evidence-based policymaking and guide rehabilitation and healthcare planning in response to the demographic change.
Leonard Roth
Unisanté
Leonard has a background in medical statistics and his research currently focuses on the longitudinal analysis of health workforce data. His dissertation project investigated the use of cluster analysis in health services research, with a strong methodological component.
Severin Schnurrenberger
Severin’s PhD-Thesis focuses on the topic Legitimation of Power from perspectives of both Social Sciences and Canon Law. His thesis includes research on the development of power relations in mental health institutes (psychiatric clinics).
Cecilia Luini
Cecilia's research focuses on the analysis and innovation of health service delivery with special attention to the challenges posed by emerging clusters of patients (e.g. frail patients). Her main research interests lie in the area of health policy and management as well as in applied health economics.
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Università della Svizzera italiana
Cinzia Zeltner
Cinzia’s research focuses on the facilitators for and barriers to task shifting in healthcare. Using a grounded theory design, this study seeks to generate a theory of how structural, personal, and administrative factors influence the implementation of task shifting in a Swiss outpatient primary care setting.
Clara MacNaughton
Clara's research focuses on mapping, identifying gaps in, and evaluating disability policy in Switzerland. This PhD project is a step within the development of a National Strategy for Spinal Cord Injury, which is a project aiming to improve the lives of persons with spinal cord injury in Switzerland.
Anna Romanova
University of Lucerne
Anna Romanova is pursuing a PhD in Health Sciences at the University of Lucerne with a dissertation that explores stakeholder engagement in health services and health policy research, with a particular focus on co-creation as a strategy for advancing Learning Health Systems (LHS). Her projects explore the best practices in applying co-creation methods to foster innovation and collaboration in health systems.
Justine Gosling
Justine is completing her PhD alongside her full-time role at the World Health Organization (WHO). Justine's research focuses on integrating rehabilitation and assistive technology into health systems emergency preparedness and response.
Céline Mötteli
Zurich University of Applied Sciences
Céline has a background as a physiotherapist. In her PhD thesis, she focuses on the management of knee osteoarthritis in Switzerland, addressing potential evidence-performance gaps and the alignment of care with clinical guidelines. Her work includes examining the patient care pathway, engaging stakeholders through a structured dialogue, developing policy recommendations, and analyzing contextual factors that influence guideline implementation.
Natalie Messerli
Natalie has a background in public health. Her research focuses on knowledge translation for evidence-informed policy-making and the interface of science to policy and practice.
Joanne Lacy
Joanne’s research focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic in Zurich. She will be using data from two population based prospective longitudinal cohort studies of adults infected and/or vaccinated with SARS-CoV-2 to evaluate immunity and the risk of breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infections among individuals in these studies.
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University of Zurich (EBPI)
Federica Zavattaro
Federica has background in Health Policy. Her research focuses on the role of public trust in health data sharing policies, with a focus on European, Italian, French, and Swiss legal acts.
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University of Zurich
Eliane Maalouf
Eliane initially focused on the design and development of a metadata repository for health-related data sources, a project she has since completed. Her current contribution to the SLHS lies in quality assurance and risk management related to the ethical use of artificial intelligence in health research. The goal is to develop practical assessment and reporting strategies that systematically incorporate ethical considerations throughout the entire research process. This also includes addressing interdisciplinary steering structures and institutional frameworks for responsible AI innovation.