The Winter LIFE School on Health and Well-being
Strengthening health and well-being for human flourishing
Well-being is a fundamental human aspiration—but what does it really mean in the context of health? And how can we foster it through health systems, care models, communication, and policies that empower people to thrive?
The Winter LIFE School on Health and Well-being is a three-day interdisciplinary program in the field of health, designed for PhD students and early-career researchers. The school offers a rich, cross-disciplinary foundation to rethink how we understand, measure, and act upon health and well-being.
This school is not about treating diseases. Nor is it about well-being in a general or abstract sense. It is about how the health field can foster human flourishing by addressing functioning at personal and systemic levels. Participants will explore well-being as a concept, but always in connection to its relevance for health, healthcare, and health systems.
- A historical, philosophical, and economic understanding of well-being as it relates to health.
- How functioning acts as the link between health and well-being.
- How to capture the lived experience of health using qualitative and quantitative methods.
- How to understand and reshape health systems, services, and policies through a functioning lens.
- How to integrate narrative, cultural, and ethical dimensions of health into research and practice.
PhD students and researchers in health sciences, rehabilitation, health policy, economics, social sciences, public health, psychology, philosophy, and other related fields who want to engage with cutting-edge research and innovation around well-being and functioning in health.
The Winter LIFE School is not only a program—it is a response to a growing need in health research and practice: to go beyond fragmented, disease-centered approaches and toward an integrated understanding of what it truly means to live well. Rooted in the field of health but drawing on insights from philosophy, economics, communication, humanities, and systems science, this school offers a one-of-a-kind educational experience.
What makes the Winter LIFE School unique is its focus on functioning—a concept that serves as a bridge between health and well-being. While traditional public health models often emphasize population-level outcomes or disease prevention, this school centers on the capacity of individuals and communities to live meaningful, autonomous lives in their environments.
Participants will not only engage with the conceptual foundations of functioning and well-being, but also explore innovative methodologies for capturing lived experience, learn to navigate the ethical and cultural dimensions of health, and discover how to design policies and services that enable human flourishing.
The faculty reflects this interdisciplinary richness, bringing together world-class experts in health communication, epidemiology, health policy, narrative healthcare, aging and functioning measurement, philosophy, health humanities, and health economics. The structure of the program fosters deep learning, peer exchange, and personalized mentorship—all essential for developing a transformative research vision.
This is a school for those who want to shape the future of health—not only by advancing science, but by rethinking what health systems should aim for in the 21st century.
