On 27 November, the Centre for Health Crises will host Sweden's first Health Crises Forum. The aim is to bring people together to discuss what universities can contribute with to support the surrounding society before, during and after a health crisis, and how they best collaborate with other actors.
The Director of the Centre for Health Crises, Professor Johan von Schreeb, is looking forward to welcoming specially invited participants from universities, the Government Offices, government authorities, regions, civil society, professional associations and others to KI, for what he describes as a forum intended to start an important conversation about health crisis management, preparedness and the role of universities.
'We have invited around one hundred crisis and disaster experts, politicians, civil servants, academics and representatives of civil society organisations and professional associations. Together we will look at how we could make the universities' role in building preparedness that is based on systematic knowledge about health crises clearer, to be used in education and as a basis for interventions."
Since it was founded in 2022, the Centre for Health Crises has looked at how the expertise that is housed at universities could be better utilised and developed in order to contribute towards a better prepared society. By organising the Health Crisis Forum and inviting participants from different organisations, they want to raise the issue more broadly.
A first step in the conversation on the role of universities in health crises and in Total Defence
The programme will begin with speeches by KI President Annika Östman Wernersson and the centre's director. This will be followed by presentations by Taha Alexandersson, Head of Emergency Preparedness at the National Board of Health and Welfare, and Johan von Knorring, Regional Director of Region Uppsala and member of the steering group for the NSPL- The Regions' National Coordination, Planning and Management of Health Care in Increased Preparedness and War, as well as Jonathan Suk, Principal Expert in Emergency Preparedness at the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) and Claes Ivgren, Surgeon General of the Swedish Armed Forces.
Taha Alexandersson, Johan von Knorring and Claes Ivgren will also participate in a panel discussion together with the State Secretaries for the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, Maria Nilsson and Miriam Söderberg, and the Head of Research at the Centre for Disaster Medicine at Linköping University, Carl-Oscar Jonsson. The panel discussion will be moderated by Maja Fjaestad, former State Secretary and now Expert Coordinator for Policy and Preparedness at the Centre for Health Crises .
The Forum will conclude with workshops on a variety of topics, where the role of universities in health crises and in total defence will be discussed in more detail.
The idea is that the forum will be a first step in the discussion about the various aspects of the role of universities in health crises and as part of the Total Defence. In addition to hosting the forum, the Centre for Health Crises will continue to work on this on an ongoing basis, not least through the Health Crisis Network , which it initiated a year ago and continues to act as a coordinating node for.
