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About us

Epidemiology for health - a joint initiative between Lund and Uppsala universities for national and international excellence

Sweden has a long history of population-based data collection, based on social security numbers, and this forms a basis for researchers at Lund University  (LU) and Uppsala University (UU) to work together for the strategic research area (SRA) "Epidemiology for Health", or abbreviated "EpiHealth".

As the name suggests, EpiHealth aims to improve the understanding of prevalence and etiology regarding both chronic and infectious diseases through "state-of-the-art" epidemiological research. With a board consisting of fifteen representatives from both universities and the healthcare system, the project will be driven forward.

The field of epidemiology is a science and not just a tool that is used in other disciplines. EpiHealth will form the basis for enabling the development and teaching of the latest findings in epidemiological methodology and technology and thus be able to advance science further.

There are three main areas covered by SRA Epihealth:

  1. Basic science epidemiology: To research the etiology of chronic and infectious diseases using "biomarkers" and interactions at the gene level.
  2. Applied epidemiology: To develop monitoring systems for prognosis, care processes and cost-effectiveness around what health care delivers and its preventive programs.
  3. Epidemiologic Infrastructures: Research and development of modern epidemiological infrastructures, for example, registers, biobanks and other technological platforms. These are based on existing infrastructures such as several large population studies, for example Malmö Preventive Medicine and Malmö Diet Cancer at LU, and the ULSAM cohort at UU. To create free access to material for research both in Sweden and abroad, EpiHealth also aims to develop new national and international research databases.

EpiHealth funding is recommended by the Swedish Research Council following a decision by the government since 2009. Since the 1st of January 2020, the EpiHealth's coordinator is Professor Sölve Elmståhl, Malmö, who coordinates epidemiological research between several researchers in Lund, Malmö and Uppsala. Assistant coordinator is Professor Marju Orho-Melander.