This year there were two winners of the SSPH+ "Best published PhD Article Award". We are glad that Kathryn Dawson-Townsend, PhD student at the Department of Health Sciences and Medicine, is one of them. Kathryn Dawson-Townsend won with her article "Social participation patterns and their associations with health and wellbeing for older adults" published in "SSM - Population Health". In the article, she uses data from the Swiss Household Panel and a latent class analysis as well as regression methods to investigate the extent to which different participation profiles in the older population are associated with health and well-being. According to Kathryn Dawson-Townsend, “the results show that the positive association between social participation and health outcomes for older adults can be largely attributed to unobserved individual characteristics, such as personality traits or genetics. For some older adults, there is a positive association between social participation and health, whereas for others there is no association. This is interesting and relevant in an era where social gatherings have been restricted and many older adults have been unable to keep up their social activities."

"I am honored to be one of the two prize winners this year, and look forward to continuing my research in this important area." Prof. Dr. Stefan Boes, supervisor of the dissertation, comments: "This award is a great recognition of Kathryn Dawson-Townsend's research achievements and confirms our strong position in research as a department".