Founder and former Nivel director Jouke van der Zee passed away

This weekend, we received the sad news that former Nivel director Jouke van der Zee (1947-2025) has passed away. Jouke dedicated his entire professional life to Nivel – the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (and its predecessor, the Dutch College of General Practitioners’ Scientific Institute, NHI), where he worked from 1972 until 2009. He founded Nivel in 1985 and led it together with his wife Jozien Bensing. As endowed professor at Maastricht University, he supervised many PhD candidates, often (former) Nivel colleagues.

Jouke was an exceptional colleague and leader. He inspired those around him with sharp insights, critical questions, and a great sense of humor. He had a genuine interest in all staff members.

He laid the foundation for research into the labor market for general practitioners. Guided by the question “What’s really going on?”, he developed a registration system that tracked longitudinal data on all GPs and their practices. This became the basis for studies on healthcare workforce capacity – a research program that continues to this day at Nivel.

His belief that solid data are the cornerstone of good research led to large-scale national studies on diseases and procedures in general practice. These two national studies systematized data collection from GP practices and from the Dutch population regarding health and health perceptions. This work ultimately evolved into what is now known as the Nivel Primary Care Database.

In the early 80s, Jouke initiated Nivel’s international research with the project “The Grass on the Other Side,” a comparison of healthcare systems in the Netherlands and Belgium. This paved the way for the many international projects Nivel has conducted since. He firmly believed that international research requires international institutions. He was one of the founding members of the European Public Health Association and actively involved in its annual international conference.

Jouke joined the Dutch College of General Practitioners’ Scientific Institute (NHI) during its transition from a scientific bureau to an independent institute. In a landscape filled with stakeholders and competing interests, he assured scientific independency in the statutory obligation to publish all research openly.

Integrity was the hallmark of his approach to research. The scientific quality of Nivel’s work was – and still is – assessed in the researchers’ meeting, where all proposals and outputs are peer-reviewed by colleagues. This meeting has been a cornerstone of Nivel since its inception and continues to function today. While such structures are often easier to establish in smaller organizations, maintaining this internal peer review process as Nivel grew was a result of Jouke’s deliberate and thoughtful leadership.

Nivel is deeply grateful for all that Jouke van der Zee has done for the institute. In these days, current and former staff who had the privilege of working with him are reflecting on their warm memories of Jouke as a person.