Postdoc HEALTH-RES: Ensuring Critical Resources for Health System Resilience

Help make health systems resilient in times of crisis. As a Postdoctoral Researcher, you will study how essential health resources and infrastructures can be organized to ensure equitable care access

Job description

Healthcare is more than hospitals and its workforce - it depends on a web of critical support systems such as supply chains, transport, energy grids, and water networks. When floods, pandemics, or other disruptions hit, these support systems can fail, creating cascading risks: ambulances can’t reach hospitals, medicines run out, power cuts disable equipment, and vulnerable groups lose access to care. The HEALTH RES project (Ensuring critical resources for health system resilience) asks: How can healthcare resilience be strengthened by integrating these critical infrastructures to ensure quality and equitable access to care amid compounded risks?

We will work closely with hospitals, primary care providers, and public health authorities within the Netherlands to understand current practices for sourcing critical supplies, identify vulnerabilities, and co develop a set of indicators that measure how disruptions in support systems affect access to and quality of care. The findings will inform new data, models, and policy recommendations, contributing to both Dutch and international debates on health system resilience, climate adaptation, and health equity.

Your role will be to:

• Map current practices for sourcing and securing critical supplies and materials across partner organisations (e.g. two hospitals, primary care providers, public health authorities). Methods: semi structured interviews and document analysis.
• Explore what data are available on essential health resources and supporting systems, and assess their usefulness.
• Co-create a regional risk picture by facilitating workshops to prioritise event–disruption–risk combinations with compounding impacts on care (e.g., precipitation extremes, flooding, supply shocks, workforce shortages) using problem structuring methods.
• Develop, together with our expert panel, clear indicators to measure how compound risks affect healthcare quality. This will be done through literature review, stakeholder input, and an iterative Delphi process (a consensus-building method among experts).

You will be part of the Policy Analysis Section within the Multi-Actor Systems (MAS) Department of the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management. Our team includes around 70 researchers, from PhD candidates to postdocs and senior staff, with backgrounds spanning the social and technical sciences. This interdisciplinary approach makes us unique: we combine different perspectives to address complex societal and technological challenges such as climate change, cybersecurity, and the energy transition.

The HEALTH-RES project is funded by NWO and led by Dr. Saba Hinrichs-Krapels, in collaboration with Dr. S.M. Labib (Utrecht University) and Dr. Ashika Maharaj (University of Groningen).

You will have access to modern research facilities that support your work. The working atmosphere is open and collaborative, with ample opportunity for daily interaction and knowledge sharing. With minimal hierarchical barriers, you will benefit from strong supervision and tailored training. Professional and personal development are central, enabling you to grow and succeed in academia.

Job requirements

Essential

• PhD in a relevant field (e.g., Health Systems/Services Research, Health Policy, Operations/Management Sciences, especially soft systems methodologies, Implementation Science, Disaster/Risk Management, or related).
• Strong qualitative methods (e.g., semi structured interviewing, conceptual frameworks) in problem structuring approaches, and experience conducting research with healthcare organisations.
• Familiarity with healthcare quality and safety concepts and metrics.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills for co creation workshops with diverse stakeholders (clinicians, procurement, continuity managers, public health, patients/community).
• Commitment to Open Science and research integrity; strong writing skills with a publication track record.
• Due to interactions with healthcare organisations in The Netherlands, Dutch fluency required (especially spoken) and high profiency in English required (written and spoken).

Desirable

• Expertise with consensus methods development (e.g., Delphi or nominal group technique).
• Knowledge of the WHO Health System Performance Assessment (HSPA) framework and quality of care dimensions.
• Experience with healthcare supply chains/materials management and/or critical infrastructure interdependencies (energy, water, transport).
• Exposure to spatial thinking or collaboration with geospatial teams; comfort working across qualitative–quantitative boundaries. 

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)

Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration.

Challenge. Change. Impact

Faculty Technology, Policy & Management

The Faculty of TPM provides an important contribution to solving complex technical-social issues, such as energy transition, mobility, digitalisation, water management and (cyber) security. TPM does this with its excellent education and research at the intersection of technology, society and policy. We combine insights from both engineering and social sciences as well as the humanities. TPM develops robust models and designs, is internationally oriented and has an extensive network of knowledge institutions, companies, social organisations and governments.

Click here to go to the website of the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management.

Conditions of employment 

• Duration of contract is 18-24 months depending if 0.8 or 1.0 FTE Temporary external finance
• A job of 30-40 hours per week. 
• Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities.
• An excellent pension scheme via the ABP. 
• The possibility to compile an individual employment package every year. 
• Discount with health insurers on supplemental packages. 
• Flexible working week. 
• Every year, 232 leave hours (at 38 hours). You can also sell or buy additional leave hours via the individual choice budget. 
• Plenty of opportunities for education, training and courses. 
• Partially paid parental leave 
• Attention for working healthy and energetically with the vitality program. 

Will you need to relocate to the Netherlands for this job? TU Delft is committed to make your move as smooth as possible! The HR unit, Coming to Delft Service, offers information on their website to help you prepare your relocation. In addition, Coming to Delft Service organises events to help you settle in the Netherlands, and expand your (social) network in Delft. A Dual Career Programme is available, to support your accompanying partner with their job search in the Netherlands.  . 

Additional information

Position is due to start 1 January 2026, but timing is flexible and can be discussed during interview stage. For more information about this vacancy, please contact Saba Hinrichs-Krapels, s.hinrichs@tudelft.nl.

Application procedure

Are you interested in this vacancy? Please apply no later than 23 November 2025 via the application button and upload the following documents:

• CV (in English)
• Cover letter (in English) to highlight how your skills match the profile
• A video pitch (in Dutch, max 2 min). Please upload your video (privately) to Youtube and share the link in your application in a PDF-file

You can address your application to Saba Hinrichs-Krapels.

Please note:

• You can apply online. We will not process applications sent by email and/or post. 
• As part of knowledge security, TU Delft conducts a risk assessment during the recruitment of personnel. We do this, among other things, to prevent the unwanted transfer of sensitive knowledge and technology. The assessment is based on information provided by the candidates themselves, such as their motivation letter and CV, and takes place at the final stages of the selection process. When the outcome of the assessment is negative, the candidate will be informed. The processing of personal data in the context of the risk assessment is carried out on the legal basis of the GDPR: performing a public task in the public interest. You can find more information about this assessment on our website about knowledge security.
• Please do not contact us for unsolicited services.