COLLABORATION. Peter Friberg’s many years of dedication to global health issues are now paying dividends, in the form of a new national research institute, the Swedish Institute for Global Health Transformation (SIGHT). The Institute has been made possible thanks to a substantial donation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and will be based at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA) in Stockholm.
“We live in a global world in which we are all affected by how people in the rest of the world feel, and how the Earth feels. Sooner or later we are also affected by the crises that affect people in other parts of the world,” notes Peter Friberg, Professor in Clinical Physiology and cardiovascular specialist, who is going to lead SIGHT, the new research institute.
It was recently revealed that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the world’s largest charity organization, had chosen to fund the new research institute at KVA. The new institute will be interdisciplinary, and have the task of increasing educational collaboration between different seats of learning in Sweden and internationally, as well as boosting the efforts of young researchers in the field of global health through leadership training and mentoring programs, and encouraging the development of a Swedish strategy for global health by contributing evidence-based knowledge at the highest level, focusing in particular on the health of women and children.
Several Years of Work
Commuting to Stockholm for different assignments is already part of Peter Friberg’s day-to-day life. During his years as chairman of the Swedish Society of Medicine, he was deeply committed to global health, which led to the Society itself also setting its focus firmly on the public health situation around the world. As part of a wide-scale collaboration, the Swedish Society of Medicine formed a work group that identified and analyzed the major health issues faced globally, before then presenting their conclusions in a document entitled “The Stockholm Declaration for Global Health.” This Declaration was presented in conjunction with the “Global Health – beyond 2015” conference, another Swedish Society of Medicine initiative. The work group that produced the document subsequently grew and evolved to become a kind of global health think-tank, which proved to be a significant event that has ultimately led to the new institute being set up.
Through his work on the Swedish Research Council’s Committee for Development Research, Peter Friberg got to know Göran Tomson, Senior Professor of International Health Systems Research at Karolinska Institutet, and a major driving force within global health research himself. Göran and Peter both feel strongly about global health and achieving more equality in the healthcare system, and share the same desire to motivate younger researchers to commit to the same issues.
“In the Sahlgrenska Academy alone we have a number of employees who have made wonderful contributions to global health, but most of these are now of pensionable age. We now need to set the stage for younger people, and make use of and arouse their interest in global challenges and in global health,” says Peter Friberg, keen to stress his point.
The Institute plans, among other things, to advertise fellowships in a number of areas aimed at younger researchers working at seats of learning in Sweden.
“We are going to work on creating evidence-based foundations against the backdrop provided by the Sustainable Development Goals, and do so via an interdisciplinary collaboration with the Royal Swedish Academy of Science’s many experts and our own international network.” Peter Friberg informs us that Göran Tomson is a member of a group at WHO (of which we are also part) that is organizing a seminar to discuss refugees’ access to fit-for-purpose healthcare systems and healthcare.
This seminar takes a publication in The Lancet (Refugees: towards better access to health-care services, January 23, 2016) as its starting point.
“We are now moving this work forward by involving more academic fields, including political science and law, and by collaborating with the newly established Center for Global Migration at GU, which is a very exciting initiative,” he continued.
Many Contributors
The work group behind the Stockholm declaration evolved into a kind of think-tank, to which more researchers, both junior and senior, from Swedish universities and other countries, were added. Peter Friberg gives a special mention to Yulia Blomstedt, an associate professor in Epidemiology and Global Health at Umeå, who together with Göran Tomson put together the background document that laid the foundations for what is now SIGHT, and Johan Dahlstrand, an economist who is now the operations manager at the Institute. KVA’s permanent secretary Göran K. Hansson, Lancet’s editor-in-chief Richard Horton, the World Bank’s Mariam Claeson and American law professor Lawrence Gostin have also been instrumental in setting up the Institute, as was Hans Rosling, Professional of International Health at Karolinska Institutet.
“Hans was actually quite critical of us in the beginning, and felt that we should be focusing more on combating poverty. He ultimately made us improve our argument to the point where he himself understood our line of thought on the overall global picture in relation to the UN’s sustainability goals; after that point he really got behind us. I was in contact with him a few days before he passed away, and he wished us the best of luck,” Peter Friberg mentions, with a tinge of sadness in his voice.
Hans Rosling died of cancer at the beginning of February. The Institute hopes to be able to work with Gapminder, Hans Rosling’s company, which is now being run by his son and daughter-in-law.
60 Percent Leave of Absence
Peter Friberg has also received the backing of his own university, not least from Vice-Chancellor Pam Fredman.
“She was really pleased that we got the funding from the Gates Foundation that enables the Institute to be set up. She is one of the people invited to take part in a workshop we are holding at the start of the summer, and we are also very hopeful that we will continue to work together closely even once she taken over as President of the International Association of Universities,” says Peter Friberg.
Peter Friberg is now on a 60 percent leave of absence so that he can focus on his global health work, but refuses to step away from his research completely, working two days a week supervising doctoral students and planning the group’s research in Gothenburg. One area they are researching is how stress and resilience (the ability to adapt to different disturbances) affect blood vessels and the brains of school-age children.
“We are working on a long-term project researching the physical and mental health of 7th grade school pupils. The research is part of Region Västra Götaland’s investment in the Public Health Committee’s efforts to improve social sustainability and reduce inequalities in the health of young people. It’s great working with such a wonderful team of researchers and exciting to find out what the research has discovered as the findings trickle in,” says Peter Friberg.
To read the article “Refugees: towards better access to health-care services”, from the Lancet, January 23, 2016, go to: http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00101-X/fulltext
To read the article about the Stockholm declaration from the Lancet, go to: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)61206-4/fulltext
