Allan Køster
Biographic Data
| ID | 220841 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Allan Køster |
| GIVEN NAMES | Allan |
| FAMILY NAME | Køster |
| SIGNATURE | KØSTER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Maastricht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1583-7391 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Cumulative disadvantage at home and at work: Explaining socioeconomic inequalities in self-rated health with evidence from the Maastricht study
AIM: This study investigates how residential and work environmental factors are associated with the relationship between socioeconomic position (SEP) and self-rated health (SRH). While previous research has examined these domains separately, this study aims to assess their combined influence and potential mediating role in explaining socioeconomic inequalities in SRH. METHODS: Longitudinal data from The Maastricht study were used, a population-ba…
Understanding loss: An existential framework
This article presents an existential framework for understanding loss and grief. Since not all experiences of loss lead to grief, I begin by exploring what constitutes grievable losses. The dominant approach in grief research has been to understand grief in terms of bereavement. In light of emerging discourses on living and non-death losses, this approach no longer seems tenable, and the contemporary debate requires an account of grievability tha…
Socioeconomic position and type 2 diabetes: The mediating role of physical work environment - the Maastricht study
Low socioeconomic position (SEP) is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes (T2D) creating socioeconomic health disparities. These inequalities might arise from differences in environmental conditions across SEP groups. People with a lower SEP might have more adverse work conditions compromising their health. We explore the mediating role of the physical work environment in socioeconomic inequalities in T2D. Cross-sectional and longitudinal data from 9…
Mourning as a ground attunement
Consolation: A fundamental existential category
In this article, we propose that the concept of consolation is a necessary part of the existential register needed to respond to human suffering in situations that cannot be changed or helped. While “consolatio” as a concept has a long and diverse history in Western thinking, it is today perceived as hopelessly unmodern and is either reduced to an aspect of affect regulation or seen as contradicting basic values such as autonomy, self-determinati…
The importance of material deprivation in type 2 diabetes incidence: Longitudinal analyses in the Maastricht study
Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a common chronic disease that disproportionately affects groups with a low socioeconomic position (SEP). In addition to traditional SEP measures, material deprivation allows for further differentiation between people at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy. This study therefore aimed to examine longitudinal associations between material deprivation and incident T2DM, independent of traditional SEP measures …
Complicating Objectification in the Medical Encounter: Embodied Experiences in the ICU during Covid-19
Front-Loaded Phenomenology in Qualitative Research: An Introduction and Practical Overview
This article provides guidance on Front-Loaded Phenomenology (FLP) in qualitative research, an approach where researchers use phenomenological concepts and conceptual distinctions during initial research planning to shape how a study is designed and conducted. FLP studies have precise conceptual foci and enable the generation of nuanced findings that may be difficult to obtain using other qualitative approaches. Further, FLP does not require comp…
The association of neighborhood walkability and food environment with incident cardiovascular disease in The Maastricht Study
Socioeconomic position and type 2 diabetes: Examining the mediating role of social cohesion-The Maastricht Study
The relationship between socioeconomic position and type 2 diabetes is well-established; individuals of lower socioeconomic position experience substantially higher rates of the disease. This study investigated the mediating role of perceived and ecometric area-level social cohesion in the association between socioeconomic position and incident type 2 diabetes. In a prospective population-based cohort, The Maastricht Study, we analyzed data from …
Promoting vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (vilpa) in middle-aged adults: An evaluation of the movsnax mobile app
The MovSnax app, tested in the present study, is the world's first digital tool aimed specifically at increasing VILPA. The findings of the present study underscore the need for further app refinement, focusing on clarifying its purpose and instructions, boosting user engagement through personalization and added motivational elements, enhancing accuracy in detecting VILPA bouts, implementing clearer feedback mechanisms, expanding customization ch…
Socioeconomic inequalities in health-related functioning among people with type 2 Diabetes: Longitudinal analyses in the Maastricht Study
Among people with T2DM, those with a lower SEP had worse health-related functioning in general than people with a higher SEP. Additionally, people with T2DM and low education developed poorer mental and social functioning over time compared to people with T2DM and high education. People with T2DM and low or intermediate income declined more in physical functioning over time than those with high incomes. In addition to HbA 1c -levels and lifestyle…
The associations of socioeconomic position with structural brain damage and connectivity and cognitive functioning: The Maastricht Study
We observed substantial SEP differences in later-life cognitive functioning. Associations of structural brain damage and connectivity with cognitive functioning were relatively small, and only marginally explained the SEP gradients in cognitive functioning
Becoming anonymous: How strict Covid-19 isolation protocols impacted ICU patients
Investigating modes of being in the world: An introduction to Phenomenologically grounded qualitative research
In this article, we develop a new approach to integrating philosophical phenomenology with qualitative research. The approach uses phenomenology’s concepts, namely existentials, rather than methods such as the epoché or reductions. We here introduce the approach to both philosophers and qualitative researchers, as we believe that these studies are best conducted through interdisciplinary collaboration. In section 1, we review the debate over phen…
The association between the food environment and adherence to healthy diet quality: The Maastricht Study
Objective: The purpose of this study is to determine if healthier neighbourhood food environments are associated with healthier diet quality. Design: This was a cross-sectional study using linear regression models to analyse data from the Maastricht Study. Diet quality was assessed using data collected with a FFQ to calculate the Dutch Healthy Diet (DHD). A buffer zone encompassing a 1000 m radius was created around each participant home address.…
Self-alienation through the loss of heteronomy: The case of bereavement
Losing an intimate other to death belongs to the most uprooting experiences in human life. Not only is it accompanied by a range of negative emotions such as sorrow, longing, anger etc., but profound grief is a limit experience that causes a rupture in the sense of self of the bereaved. This experience is often expressed in identity statements such as ‘I no longer feel like myself’ or ‘I am missing part of myself’. Although such experiences are r…
Cultural, Existential and Phenomenological Dimensions of Grief Experience
Draws on perspectives from philosophy, psychology and sociocultural studies to focus on the experiential dimension of grief, moving beyond understanding from a purely mental health and psychiatry perspective. Considers individual, shared and collective experiences of loss
The felt sense of the other: Contours of a sensorium
Cultural, Existential and Phenomenological Perspectives of Grief Experience
Longing for concreteness: How body memory matters to continuing bonds
This paper explores the relevance of body memory to Continuing Bonds. Specifically, I argue that an adequately sedimented felt sense of the deceased in inter-corporeal body memory is a condition of possibility for maintaining a continued bond. This felt sense of the deceased, which amounts to a complex embodied sensorium, does not exist in isolation, but is vitally dependent on being maintained through continued enactments, social scaffolding and…
Adulthood Socioeconomic Position and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus—A Comparison of Education, Occupation, Income, and Material Deprivation: The Maastricht Study
In an effort to better quantify the impact of adulthood socioeconomic circumstances on prediabetes and type 2 diabetes (T2DM), we set out to examine the relative importance of four adulthood socioeconomic indicators. Using cross-sectional data from The Maastricht Study on 2011 middle-aged older men and women, our findings indicate that low educational level (OR = 1.81, 95% CI = 1.24-2.64), low occupational level (OR = 1.42, 95% CI = 0.98-2.05), a…
The Presence of Grief: Research-Based Art and Arts-Based Research on Grief
The authors involved in the creation of this text collaborate on a research project called The Culture of Grief, which explores the current conditions and implications of grief. The authors mostly employ conventional forms of qualitative inquiry, but the present text represents an attempt to reach a level of understanding not easily obtained through conventional methods. The group of authors participated as members of the audience in an avant-gar…
The silent burden of stigmatisation: A qualitative study among Dutch people with a low socioeconomic position
Despite the good intentions of policies to enhance self-reliance, responsibility and active citizenship, these policies and related societal beliefs might affect people at the lower end of our socioeconomic hierarchies by making them feel inferior, ashamed and blamed, especially when they cannot meet societal expectations or when they feel treated disrespectfully, unjustly or unequally by social workers or volunteers of charity organisations
What they say and what they do: Comparing physical activity across the USA, England and the Netherlands
BACKGROUND: Physical activity (PA) is important for maintaining health, but there are fundamental unanswered questions on how best it should be measured. METHODS: We measured PA in the Netherlands (n=748), the USA (n=540) and England (n=254), both by a 7 day wrist-worn accelerometer and by self-reports. The self-reports included a global self-report on PA and a report on the frequency of vigorous, moderate and mild activity. RESULTS: The self-rep…
Racial Differences in Self-Rated Health at Similar Levels of Physical Functioning: An Examination of Health Pessimism in the Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study
The results suggest greater health pessimism among Black elders and expand previous work by including objective functioning in multidimensional models to deconstruct race variations in the SRH of older adults
Socioeconomic inequalities in mobility decline in chronic disease groups (asthma/COPD, heart disease, diabetes mellitus, low back pain): Only a minor role for disease severity and comorbidity
Objective: This study examined the association between socioeconomic status and mobility decline and whether this could be explained by disease severity and comorbidity in four different chronic disease groups (asthma/COPD, heart disease, diabetes mellitus, and low back pain). It is not clear, whether the adverse course of physical functioning in persons with a low socioeconomic status can be explained by a higher prevalence of more severe diseas…
The Presence of Grief: Research-Based Art and Arts-Based Research on Grief
The authors involved in the creation of this text collaborate on a research project called The Culture of Grief, which explores the current conditions and implications of grief. The authors mostly employ conventional forms of qualitative inquiry, but the present text represents an attempt to reach a level of understanding not easily obtained through conventional methods. The group of authors participated as members of the audience in an avant-gar…
The role of psychosocial factors in explaining socio-economic differences in mobility decline in a chronically ill population: Results from the GLOBE study
A blunted diurnal cortisol response in the lower educated does not explain educational differences in coronary heart disease: Findings from the Ages-Reykjavik Study
What they say and what they do: Comparing physical activity across the USA, England and the Netherlands
BACKGROUND: Physical activity (PA) is important for maintaining health, but there are fundamental unanswered questions on how best it should be measured. METHODS: We measured PA in the Netherlands (n=748), the USA (n=540) and England (n=254), both by a 7 day wrist-worn accelerometer and by self-reports. The self-reports included a global self-report on PA and a report on the frequency of vigorous, moderate and mild activity. RESULTS: The self-rep…
Socioeconomic inequalities in mobility decline in chronic disease groups (asthma/COPD, heart disease, diabetes mellitus, low back pain): Only a minor role for disease severity and comorbidity
Objective: This study examined the association between socioeconomic status and mobility decline and whether this could be explained by disease severity and comorbidity in four different chronic disease groups (asthma/COPD, heart disease, diabetes mellitus, and low back pain). It is not clear, whether the adverse course of physical functioning in persons with a low socioeconomic status can be explained by a higher prevalence of more severe diseas…
The role of psychosocial factors in explaining socio-economic differences in mobility decline in a chronically ill population: Results from the GLOBE study
Explanations of socioeconomic differences in changes in physical function in older adults: Results from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam
The findings indicate age-specificity of both the pattern of socioeconomic status differences in function in older persons and the mechanisms underlying these associations
Racial Differences in Self-Rated Health at Similar Levels of Physical Functioning: An Examination of Health Pessimism in the Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study
The results suggest greater health pessimism among Black elders and expand previous work by including objective functioning in multidimensional models to deconstruct race variations in the SRH of older adults
Socioeconomic factors from midlife predict mobility limitation and depressed mood three decades later; Findings from the Ages-Reykjavik Study
Socioeconomic factors from midlife and from childhood affect mobility limitation and depressed mood in old age. Prevention of health problems in old age should begin as early as midlife
A blunted diurnal cortisol response in the lower educated does not explain educational differences in coronary heart disease: Findings from the Ages-Reykjavik Study
Contextualising eating problems in individual diet counselling
Health professionals consider diet to be a vital component in managing weight, chronic diseases and the overall promotion of health. This article takes the position that the complexity and contextual nature of individual eating problems needs to be addressed in a more systematic and nuanced way than is usually the case in diet counselling, motivational interviewing and health coaching. We suggest the use of narrative practice as a critical and co…
Mentalization, embodiment, and narrative: Critical comments on the social ontology of mentalization theory
Recently, mentalization theory has risen to fame as a theoretical framework emphasising social cognition as a key issue in its approach to psychopathology and psychotherapy. In this article, I review and criticise the social-ontological assumptions made by mentalization theory, arguing that, in spite of a strong interactive focus, it remains fundamentally rooted in a Cartesian ontology, overlooking embodied, expressive, enactive, and sociocultura…
Comparison of Summer and Winter Objectively Measured Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior in Older Adults: Age, Gene/Environment Susceptibility Reykjavik Study
In Iceland, there is a large variation in daylight between summer and winter. The aim of the study was to identify how this large variation influences physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB). Free living PA was measured by a waist-worn accelerometer for one week during waking hours in 138 community-dwelling older adults (61.1% women, 80.3 ± 4.9 years) during summer and winter months. In general, SB occupied about 75% of the registered …
The association of early life socioeconomic conditions with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes: Results from the Maastricht study
Socioeconomic inequalities starting in early life were associated with diabetes-related outcomes in adulthood and suggest the usefulness of early life interventions aimed at tackling these inequalities
Socially isolated individuals are more prone to have newly diagnosed and prevalent type 2 diabetes mellitus - the Maastricht study
This study shows that several aspects of structural and functional characteristics of the social network were associated with newly and previously diagnosed T2DM, partially different for men and women. These results may provide useful targets for T2DM prevention efforts
The silent burden of stigmatisation: A qualitative study among Dutch people with a low socioeconomic position
Despite the good intentions of policies to enhance self-reliance, responsibility and active citizenship, these policies and related societal beliefs might affect people at the lower end of our socioeconomic hierarchies by making them feel inferior, ashamed and blamed, especially when they cannot meet societal expectations or when they feel treated disrespectfully, unjustly or unequally by social workers or volunteers of charity organisations
What they say and what they do: Comparing physical activity across the USA, England and the Netherlands
BACKGROUND: Physical activity (PA) is important for maintaining health, but there are fundamental unanswered questions on how best it should be measured. METHODS: We measured PA in the Netherlands (n=748), the USA (n=540) and England (n=254), both by a 7 day wrist-worn accelerometer and by self-reports. The self-reports included a global self-report on PA and a report on the frequency of vigorous, moderate and mild activity. RESULTS: The self-rep…
Adulthood Socioeconomic Position and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus—A Comparison of Education, Occupation, Income, and Material Deprivation: The Maastricht Study
In an effort to better quantify the impact of adulthood socioeconomic circumstances on prediabetes and type 2 diabetes (T2DM), we set out to examine the relative importance of four adulthood socioeconomic indicators. Using cross-sectional data from The Maastricht Study on 2011 middle-aged older men and women, our findings indicate that low educational level (OR = 1.81, 95% CI = 1.24-2.64), low occupational level (OR = 1.42, 95% CI = 0.98-2.05), a…
The Presence of Grief: Research-Based Art and Arts-Based Research on Grief
The authors involved in the creation of this text collaborate on a research project called The Culture of Grief, which explores the current conditions and implications of grief. The authors mostly employ conventional forms of qualitative inquiry, but the present text represents an attempt to reach a level of understanding not easily obtained through conventional methods. The group of authors participated as members of the audience in an avant-gar…
Longing for concreteness: How body memory matters to continuing bonds
This paper explores the relevance of body memory to Continuing Bonds. Specifically, I argue that an adequately sedimented felt sense of the deceased in inter-corporeal body memory is a condition of possibility for maintaining a continued bond. This felt sense of the deceased, which amounts to a complex embodied sensorium, does not exist in isolation, but is vitally dependent on being maintained through continued enactments, social scaffolding and…
Cultural, Existential and Phenomenological Dimensions of Grief Experience
Draws on perspectives from philosophy, psychology and sociocultural studies to focus on the experiential dimension of grief, moving beyond understanding from a purely mental health and psychiatry perspective. Considers individual, shared and collective experiences of loss
The felt sense of the other: Contours of a sensorium
Cultural, Existential and Phenomenological Perspectives of Grief Experience
Self-alienation through the loss of heteronomy: The case of bereavement
Losing an intimate other to death belongs to the most uprooting experiences in human life. Not only is it accompanied by a range of negative emotions such as sorrow, longing, anger etc., but profound grief is a limit experience that causes a rupture in the sense of self of the bereaved. This experience is often expressed in identity statements such as ‘I no longer feel like myself’ or ‘I am missing part of myself’. Although such experiences are r…
Becoming anonymous: How strict Covid-19 isolation protocols impacted ICU patients
Investigating modes of being in the world: An introduction to Phenomenologically grounded qualitative research
In this article, we develop a new approach to integrating philosophical phenomenology with qualitative research. The approach uses phenomenology’s concepts, namely existentials, rather than methods such as the epoché or reductions. We here introduce the approach to both philosophers and qualitative researchers, as we believe that these studies are best conducted through interdisciplinary collaboration. In section 1, we review the debate over phen…
The association between the food environment and adherence to healthy diet quality: The Maastricht Study
Objective: The purpose of this study is to determine if healthier neighbourhood food environments are associated with healthier diet quality. Design: This was a cross-sectional study using linear regression models to analyse data from the Maastricht Study. Diet quality was assessed using data collected with a FFQ to calculate the Dutch Healthy Diet (DHD). A buffer zone encompassing a 1000 m radius was created around each participant home address.…
Promoting vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (vilpa) in middle-aged adults: An evaluation of the movsnax mobile app
The MovSnax app, tested in the present study, is the world's first digital tool aimed specifically at increasing VILPA. The findings of the present study underscore the need for further app refinement, focusing on clarifying its purpose and instructions, boosting user engagement through personalization and added motivational elements, enhancing accuracy in detecting VILPA bouts, implementing clearer feedback mechanisms, expanding customization ch…
Socioeconomic inequalities in health-related functioning among people with type 2 Diabetes: Longitudinal analyses in the Maastricht Study
Among people with T2DM, those with a lower SEP had worse health-related functioning in general than people with a higher SEP. Additionally, people with T2DM and low education developed poorer mental and social functioning over time compared to people with T2DM and high education. People with T2DM and low or intermediate income declined more in physical functioning over time than those with high incomes. In addition to HbA 1c -levels and lifestyle…
Medicine (21 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Gerontology (14 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (14 works) · Demography (13 works) · Environmental health (13 works) · Population (13 works) · Demography (12 works) · Socioeconomic status (12 works) · Epistemology (10 works)