The link between health and globalisation becomes increasingly clear. So says Professor Stig Wall, project leader for the new FAS centre for global public health research located at Umeå University.
(Professor Peter Byass is now the Director of the Centre. Stig Wall continues to work as Senior Advisor.)
He uses SARS as an example. This disease spread through globalisation, but can also be fought thanks to global contacts.
The research centre he is now establishing has its origin in the Unit for Epidemiology and Public Health Sciences at Umeå, but is based in a number of research projects and collaborative efforts primarily in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nicaragua and South Africa.
Researchers at Umeå have long collaborated with researchers in these countries and developed extensive field databases and research stations in each country. In addition the department has for many years been offering an international master’s programme in public health and has recently together with the Karolinska Institute started a research school in global health supported by the Swedish Research Council.
Now the projects will be concentrated in the new research centre. The basis will still be collaboration with low- and mid-income countries, but it will be possible to place future research and collaboration on a more long-term footing. Many projects are aimed at intervention studies on how to improve public health.
“In several studies we will be looking at the development of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and comparing them to the economic development,” explains Stig Wall. “Money doesn’t always create better health. Public health science has its own fundamental issues which we will now have time to address. This includes new ways of evaluating intervention studies.”
He emphasises that public health research is a complex field. Poor countries today often carry a double disease burden. They are affected both by diseases of poverty such as HIV and malnutrition and by classical public health diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and stroke. The Umeå centre will therefore be operated on an interdisciplinary basis.
“No single researcher can handle all these issues”, he says. “Here we have physicians, sociologists, statisticians, social workers, physiotherapists and not least health economists who can determine whether an investment was worth the money and how funds can be most efficiently used. Many of our doctoral students come from other countries, an investment which we will now be able to develop.”
Some of the research deals with public health efforts in Sweden.
“Although our research is often carried out in other countries, we learn much about how to handle our own problems,” says Stig Wall. “When we were working on intervention studies and collaborating at the village level to prevent the spread of HIV in Tanzania, we gained experience that we have since drawn upon in our work to reduce cardiovascular disease in the Norsjö project here in Västerbotten County. That project is managed from here and we have a very interesting database which we are continuing to expand. The local experiences from Västerbotten are also valuable now that cardiovascular diseases are being recognized as global health threats to a large extent created through exports to developing countries of established risk factors.”
Text: Sara Bergqvist Månsson
FAS centre funding: SEK5.5 million annually.
For further information: 
, www.globalhealthresearch.net
