About the Centre for Health Crises
At the Centre for Health Crises, our vision is a society better prepared for future health crises. It is our mission to build the next generation of health crises experts, through research, education, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Our strategic goals define our areas of engagement and how we will achieve our mission and vision.
The establishment of the Centre for Health Crises at KI is a way to contribute to building a society better prepared for health crises, by way of research, education, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The Centre believes that in an era of polycrises, universities could have a ‘fourth task’ - to contribute its expertise and experience, before and during crises.
Our Vision
A society better prepared for future health crises.
Our Mission
By way of research, education, and interdisciplinary collaboration, we want to contribute to improved preparedness and ability to handle future health crises. Our mission is to do so by building the next generation of health crisis experts. We want to make sure that knowledge and proven experience inform policy and plans for the handling of future health crises.
Our workplan and annual reports
The podcast Riskzonen
Riskzonen is a podcast (in Swedish) about the dangers that loom and how to handle the unpredictability of life, produced and presented by toxicologist Mattias Öberg and epidemiologist Emma Frans. The podcast provides a scientific perspective on events that have had an impact on the world and on how we view risks.
The Centre for Health Crises co-produced the fourth season of the podcast, which was first released on podcast platforms in the spring, summer, and early autumn of 2023. Each of the episodes in the season covers a topic related to health crises, such as heat waves, outbreaks of contagious diseases, and health system resilience. Alongside Mattias, who is an expert coordinator in chemical and toxicological incident at the Centre, the episodes feature several other members of our team, who share their expertise and provide insights into how we prepare for and manage health crises. You can listen to Riskzonen on all major podcast platforms.
Our Strategic Goals
The Centre for Health Crises is guided by our strategic goals, which are based on the core tasks of the university, but with a focus on health crises.
- Catalyse research collaborations within the field of health crises and create meeting spaces for interdisciplinary collaboration
- Stimulate and participate in the development of new education within different health crises subjects
- Gather existing and build new health crises expertise, and supply specific know-how and competence
- Drive policy development and in collaboration, set the agenda for increased health crises preparedness
- Act as KI’s and its managements sensor for new health threats, and contribute to the coordination of KI’s efforts in a health crisis
We act on both short and long timescales, working to increase resilience through both preparedness and response.
The first goal highlights how the Centre wants to be a catalyst, as well as a forum, to connect and stimulate interdisciplinary research collaborations. Managing health crises is a multidisciplinary effort, involving many scientific disciplines and areas. Examples on early efforts toward this goal includes our seminar series KI Contributes, and our participation in various networks and forums.
Our second goal emphasises that, in order to achieve our mission, it is vital that we act to stimulate education and actively engage in the development of new training and education in preparedness, response, and evaluation of health crisis initiatives. Members of staff from the Centre have for example conducted mass casualty exercises in Ukraine and Moldova. We are also developing courses in outbreak epidemiology as well as in how to make rapid evidence reviews to guide decision-making in times of crises.
In working towards our third goal, we map knowledge and skills that exist at KI and other universities and work to make that expertise available to society, both during a health crisis and in crisis preparedness. We have seconded experts to Ukraine, Malawi, and Turkey, to name a few.
With our fourth goal, we want use evidence and our expertise to drive policy and help set the agenda when it comes to building capacities for health crisis management, preparation, and evaluation. Among other things, we coordinated KI's response to the government report on the preparedness of the Swedish health and medical care system (SOU 2022:6), and we continue to be engaged in the public debate on crisis preparedness in Sweden.
Our fifth goal underlines our role in assisting KI as needed in the coordination of, and preparation for, future health crises. As part of this goal, we conducted a review of KI's work during the COVID-19 pandemic and the lessons that can be learnt from it, which resulted in the report Being better prepared for the next health crisis – lessons from KI during the COVID-19 pandemic.