Thijs van der Heijden is an epidemiologist in the Patient-Centered Oncology Research Group at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Erasmus MC. His research focusses on understanding how cancer and its treatment affect patients, by investigating on adolescents and young adults (AYAs), health-related quality of life (HRQoL), outcomes and late effects of cancer, as well as data pooling and harmonization and prediction modelling.
Thijs particularly enjoys working with large datasets, real-world data and to solve complex questions. He leverages insights from biomedical sciences, public health, and epidemiology to further understand patient-centered problems.
Currently, Thijs is involved in the STRONG-AYA project, a European initiative aimed at improving outcomes and survivorship care for adolescent and young adult cancer patients. This project uses multiple international data sources which are brought together by federated learning for decentralized analysis. Additionally, he is working with a large Dutch breast cancer cohort to compare disease and HRQoL outcomes between AYAs and older patients.
In 2025, Thijs received the Early Career Investigator Visiting Grant from the EORTC Quality of Life Group.
