Academic and Professional Profile
He holds a European PhD in Sociology from Universitat Rovira i Virgili (2011) and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nursing at the same institution, where he has been based since 2016. Since 2025, he has served as Coordinator of the Advanced Nursing Research Group (CARING).
He currently combines his academic role with the co-directorship of the URV Chair in Social Inclusion and is a member of the Academic Committee of the PhD Programme in Nursing and Health.
His teaching includes the Bachelor's Degree in Nursing and the Official Master's Degree in Research in Nursing Sciences at URV, as well as various postgraduate and advanced training programmes, including the Postgraduate Programme in Gender Equality Policies in Public Management (University of Barcelona and School of Public Administration of Catalonia) and the Postgraduate Course in Applied Social Research and Data Analysis at the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), Spain.
Research Interests
His research focuses on the analysis of health behaviours, with particular attention to risk factors and health inequalities within nursing and public health contexts. He has conducted research on addictions, health among vulnerable populations, and living conditions, adopting a multidisciplinary approach.
In recent years, he has expanded his work to include shared decision-making in healthcare, particularly in the field of contraceptive counselling, with a strong applied orientation towards knowledge transfer and the improvement of clinical practice.
Research Projects and Knowledge Transfer
He is co-Principal Investigator (co-PI) of the competitive research project "Violence against healthcare professionals: Assessment, challenges and intervention proposals from a gender perspective" (PID2024-161812OB-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the Generación del Conocimiento call (2024).
Over the course of his career, he has participated in 15 competitive research projects (five as Principal Investigator) and in more than 15 research contracts.
Publications and Academic Recognition
He has authored approximately 30 peer-reviewed articles published in indexed scientific journals, primarily in Q1 and Q2 quartiles (Web of Science and Scopus). He has also published books and book chapters with leading academic publishers ranked in the Scholarly Publishers Indicators.
He has contributed to research projects awarded the URV Social Council Prize for the Social Impact of Research (2018 and 2021) in the fields of social sciences and health.
He regularly serves as a reviewer for competitive research funding programmes and participates in academic and scientific evaluation panels and examination boards in the fields of social and health sciences.
Email: francesc.valls(ELIMINAR)@urv.cat
