Ole Petter Ottersen, president Karolinska Institutet 2017-2023

Earlier this year, Makerere University in Uganda and Karolinska Institutet signed an agreement to establish the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Health (CESH). Now we push ahead: a digital launch of the centre will take place on 16 September.

The aim of CESH is to promote partnerships and develop capacity, resources and tools for researchers and policy makers on the global scene. This new initiative builds on and extends the collaboration between the Makerere University and KI – a successful collaboration that goes back almost 20 years.  

Improve health

This new centre is inspired by the ambitions of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainable health is a multisectoral area for study, research, education, and practice that aims to improve health and wellbeing for all, across geographical and generational boundaries and socioeconomic strata. By engaging networks and communities in reciprocal innovation and learning, this field strives to reduce health inequities not only through generation and dissemination of knowledge but also through implementation and policy changes.

The Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Health is a direct follow-up of our Strategy 2030 which states: “Over the past decades, KI has built up a strong position in global health and health equity. KI shall therefore aim to be a leading actor in ongoing efforts to achieve the sustainable development goal that directly relates to health and wellbeing.”

Lag far behind

COVID-19 has unveiled the sad consequences of health inequities. Most notably, poor countries lag far behind the rich in terms of access to vaccines and other opportunities to effectively and humanely counter the spread of infection. We have addressed this in several articles in recent months, including:

• “The battle for COVID-19 vaccines highlights the need for a new global governance mechanism” (Nature Medicine, March 2021)
• “Solidarity and universal preparedness for health after COVID-19” (BMJ, January 2021)
•  “COVID-19 puts the Sustainable Development Goals center stage” (Nature Medicine, October 2020).

Please join the interactive digital launch of the centre on September 16, 2021! These are among the issues that will be addressed:

• Challenges and opportunities for sustainable health 
• What do we want to achieve? What has been achieved so far?
• The role of academia and partnerships in achieving sustainable health

Speakers at the seminar are:

Giulia Gaudenzi: affiliated researcher at the Department of Global Public Health and a postdoctoral fellow at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Division of Nanobiotechnology at SciLifeLab. Her research is focusing on the development of point-of-care diagnostics for low-resource settings. 

Rawlance Ndejjo, researcher at Makerere University School of Public Health with over 8 years experience in teaching and public health research. He coordinates work of the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Health at Makerere University. 

Tobias Alfvén, project manager of the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Health. He works as senior clinical lecturer at the Department of Global Public Health at Karolinska Institutet and as a pediatrician at Sachs’ children and youth hospital in Stockholm. 

Rhoda Wanyenze, professor and dean of Makerere University School of Public Health and deputy project manager of the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Health. She has vast experience in infectious diseases research, capacity building and program management, especially in the area of HIV and TB, and has also conducted several studies in maternal and child health.

Moderators are Erika Bjerström, senior foreign news correspondent at Swedish Television (SVT), and Dr. Roy William Mayega, lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, at the School of Public Health, Makerere University, teaching Epidemiology and Research

Date and time:
16 September 2021; 13:00 -14:30 (Swedish time). Read more about the event on KI’s web site.

Welcome!