Statistics Netherlands and University of Amsterdam establish chair in cause of death registration

Prof. dr. J.W.P.F. (Jan) Kardaun has been appointed professor by special appointment in the registration and statistics of causes of death at the University of Amsterdam. He will start his tenure at the department of social medicine at the university’s Academic Medical Center (AMC) on 1 November 2014, for one day a week. The remainder of his work will still be as a medical researcher at Statistics Netherlands.

Bringing cause of death statistics up to date

The new chair has been established to modernise cause of death statistics and bring them in line with today’s situation, in which  many people die at very old ages, while they suffer from more chronic disease. The chair will be oriented at redefining the concept ‘cause of death’. This will make it possible to indicate one cause of death where that is clearly the case, but more than one cause when the situation warrants this.  Changes in these statistics are coordinated under supervision of the World Health Organization. 
The chair Registration and statistics of cause of death aims further to improve the quality of the collected data, which will include digital delivery by doctors in the future.
 
The establishment of this chair is a further contribution to the dialogue between Statistics Netherlands and the scientific community. This area of statistics is not only one of the oldest (since 1851), but still one of the most used in the Netherlands, in a very wide range of research fields.

About Jan Kardaun

Jan Kardaun graduated in medicine from the University of Groningen (1981), trained as a public health physician (1987) and received his PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam (1990). He has been working as medical officer at Statistics Netherlands since 2006, and supervises the compilation of cause of death statistics.