Dederieke Maes-Festen

Dederieke Maes-Festen was trained in medicine at the KU Leuven in Belgium. She worked as a physician in child- and adolescent psychiatry. She completed her PhD, focusing on growth hormone treatment in children with Prader-Willi syndrome in 2007. Dederieke is a physician for people with intellectual disabilities. She is currently working as associate professor and member of the management team of the chair of Intellectual Disability Medicine, Dpt. Of General practice at the Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on health in people with ID. She is principal investigator of the Healthy Aging in Intellectual Disability study (HA-ID). This research program focuses specifically on the most common chronic health conditions in people with ID, on the development of tools to identify health issues and on interventions to improve health outcome in elderly with ID.