This course uses the four steps of the Public Health Model: (1) Analysis of the health problem; (2) Identifying risk and protective factors; (3) Development and evaluation of (new or improved) interventions to promote health; (4) Strategies to improve the implementation and quality management. This is followed by evaluation by going back to step 1.Step 1: Lifestyles in the current modern society are one of the most important factors that influence health. We discuss how to promote healthy life styles. Further, how to promote mental health. We discuss how to support parenting skills in families, and for people with chronic conditions and frail old people, how to promote ‘self-management’. We combine health care and social care.Step 2: How can we study risk and protective factors (cross-sectional and longitudinal studies). Both ‘qualitative research’, and ‘quantitative’, epidemiological research. Most important are socio-economic factors, and the ethnic background or migration history. We will show how in the Generation R birth cohort study we can study how these factors work from early pregnancy onwards. We will also use longitudinal datasets of older people. We illustrate mediation analyses to evaluate the causal pathways. We will show how we can use the longitudinal datasets of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to study risk and protective factors. By that, we increase the research output of RCTs, and we gain more insight.Step 3: We will show and discuss examples of how we can use the results of step 1 and step 2, for step 3. For this, we can use a formal procedure. For example: The Intervention Mapping (IM) protocol (Bartholomew et al.) describes the path from problem identification (in step 1 and 2) to problem solving or new intervention. We give attention to the use of E-health and M-health in public health for both younge4r and older people (vulnerable populations). Also we discuss ‘integrated care’. Especially the integration of health care and social care. Finally, we discuss programs to improve ‘self-management’. In evidence-based medicine and public health it is important to do (cluster-randomized) controlled trials to evaluate the effect. We will also discussed other designs, which do not use randomization (e.g. naturalistic effect evaluation).Step 4: Even when an intervention is effective, optimal implementation is needed. Otherwise there is no population impact. Implementation research is a new line of public health research. We show examples on how to do this.The focus in the course is on doing research yourself in public health. You can specialize yourself in step 1, 2, 3 or 4. But, a public health researcher needs to know all four steps. The research in this course is about projects in the real life of cities and regions. It is not about laboratory experiments. Also, it is not only about using existing data sets. We will also discuss how to set up studies; how to include participants in the study; how to collect and analyze data; and how to evaluate and interpret the data.For the examination, you will write an essay on one of the topics in the course. In a small group, or alone.