Documentation

This page contains some more information on the Stress in Action programme.

Research application

We are happy and honoured that our Stress in Action programme received a Gravitation grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This grant of 19.6 million Euro will fund 10 years of research activities to make the Stress in Action programme reality.

Gender balance, career phase, and geographic spread of the (future) SiA

Infographics of the Stress in Action Consortium

Six Game Changers of the Stress in Action programme

What is often done today

  • Focus on stress responses in artificial, short-lasting lab settings or animal models

  • (A few) one-time assessments) of static contextual factors that increase stress responses
  • Static stress reactivity concept: individual differences in amplitude of emotional or physiological stress responses
  • Stress response impact on single health outcome
  • Knowledge and data analytic strategies focused on group comparisons of stress responses, not necessarily applicable to single individuals
  • Participant is passive subject of research

What we will do in Stress in Action

  • Focus on stress responses in humans in ecologically valid settings during prolonged ambulatory assessment

  • Continuous and/or repeated assessments of dynamic contextual ises factors that evoke or buffer stress responses in daily life
  • Dynamic stress reactivity concept: individual differences in amplitude, frequency and transfer function of interacting emotional, cognitive, physiological & behavioral responses over time
  • Stress response impact simultaneously on mental and cardiometabolic disease processes
  • Knowledge and data analytic strategies focused on individual’s stress responses over time and utilization of personal stress profiles for prediction and intervention
  • Participant is actively involved in stress assessment and intervention

Strategic, theoretical, and instrumental output that Stress in Action will yield over its 10-year timeline

Strategic output

  • A collaborative, multidisciplinary, lasting consortium that boosts Dutch daily-life stress research and researchers towards higher levels and puts them at the forefront of science
  • Enrichment of Dutch cohorts with novel and ecologically valid daily-life stress data to be utilized for future research well beyond the duration of the SiA programme
  • A top-notch privacy-compliant infrastructure for the collection, integration, and exchange of smartphone- and wearable device-based data

Theoretical output

  • Detailed understanding of the aetiology of the daily-life stress response, i.e. the dynamic interaction between daily-life contextual events and the emotional, cognitive, physiological, and behavioural responses to these
  • Evidence-based characterization of the mechanisms by which daily-life stress responses impact on onset and course of mental and cardiometabolic disease
  • Personalized risk detection by mapping the moderating effect of evoking/buffering environmental factors and person-specific vulnerability/resilience factors on the dynamic pattern of daily-life stress

Instrumental output

  • Set of reliable and valid measures from user-acceptable tools to be utilized – by us and others – to assess daily-life stress in full, i.e. (a) the daily-life contextual factors that evoke or reduce stress response, and (b) the dynamic interaction of emotional, cognitive, physiological, and behavioural responses). This empowers the evaluation of interventions aimed at reducing stress, or stress-related mental and cardiometabolic disease.
  • Novel, validated big data analytic techniques to capture the temporal dynamics in ambulatory, longitudinal within-person daily-life stress data and for personalised prediction of the impact of stress on health
  • Strategies and designs for just-in-the-time adaptive intervention based on a person’s daily-life stress responses