One year Sustainable Health Unit

In January 2023, we set out to consolidate a new unit, an exciting step forward for our organization. While our journey has its complexities, the dedication and unity of our team have turned challenges into opportunities for growth and innovation.

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to each of you for your unwavering support towards our work and our unit. I'm genuinely excited about what we're doing here at SUSTAINIT – we're on a mission that really matters.

Here are some of SUSTAINITS acchievements in its first year of existence.

Strategy

The strategy we have developed is the result of a collaborative effort. Through numerous meetings and in-depth discussions, we have refined our vision. Your contributions have been instrumental in shaping and enhancing our strategy at every step of this process.

International Advisory Board

SUSTAINIT has successfully formed an impressive International Advisory Board (IAB), whose members show a keen interest in and ongoing support for our work. Their contributions have been notable across various publications and seminars, and they have spearheaded projects involving SUSTAINIT's participation. A prime example is the new Lancet Commission, led by our IAB Chair, Ole Petter Ottersen.

Funding

In the initial months, we have been fortunate to secure funding from multiple sources:

1. The Pandemic Centre has garnered support through the UiO: Life Science scheme to establish the inaugural cohort of research groups.
2. The Centre for Global Health (CGH) Deputy Head, Mekdes Gebremariam, has obtained funding from NORPLUS to the Nordic Network on Global Health
3. The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Education (SHE) has obtained ERASMUS+ funding for a European collaborative project titled "DEBATING DEMOCRACY” (led by Gabriela Saldanha)
4. SHE has also received funding from UiO:Democracy for the project "The Medicalisation of Democratic Rights in the Debate about Abortion (MEDRA) (led by Eivind Engebretsen).
5. SUSTAINIT has obtained funding from UiO:Life Science for initiating the Oslo-Lancet Commission on Global Governance for Health 2.0 (led by Ole Petter Ottersen).
6. CGH Deputy Head Asgeir Johannessen has secured significant funds for an African network on viral Hepatitis.
7. Last but not least, The Deputy Head of the Pandemic Centre, Nils Christian Stenseth, has obtained 10 million euros for his Synergy Grant project.

Additionally, we have support from the following ongoing projects:

1. VIRTUAL PRESENCE, sponsored by the Research Council of Norway (led by Marit Haldar)
2. Equity AMR, backed by the Research Council of Norway (led by Sundeep Sahay)
3. Bodies in Translation, funded by the Research Council of Norway (led by John Ødemark)

We have also several applications presently under review from multiple sources.

1. Climate, Environment, and Health, Belmont Forum (2nd Stage)
2. Crisis – Perspectives from the Humanities, Humanities in the European Research Area  (1st stage)
3. Research Centre for Professional Education targeting vulnerable children and adolescents, sponsored by the Research Council of Norway
4. ERC SyG (a collaboration between UiO and Oxford), revising an application that progressed to the third stage in 2019

Comminsions

SUSTAINIT is involved in four Lancet commissions related to our mission:

1. The Lancet One Health Commission (co-chaired by Andrea Winkler)
2. NUS-Lancet Pandemic Readiness, Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation (PRIME) Commission (chaired by Helen Clark, Sania Nishtar and Helena Legido-Quigley)
3. EASL-Lancet Commission on Liver Disease in Europe (chaired by Tom Hemming Karlsen)
4. UiO-Lancet Commission on Global Governance for Health 2.0 (chaired by Ole Petter Ottersen)

For the latter initiative, SUSTAINIT serves as the secretariat for the commission.

Education

SHE has expanded its educational portfolio by developing an Honours Certificate in Education for Sustainable Development, designed to equip upcoming health educators with analytical methods for sustainable health issues, which can be found here.

Additionally, SHE has pioneered an exchange program for students, offering scholarships for collaborative projects with the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (PMNCH) - further details are available at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Education's website. Furthermore, a new European course has been introduced, focusing on the politics of sustainability in public health: FHE4350 – Politics of Sustainability in Public Health - Data-Driven Critical Conceptual Analysis – University of Oslo (uio.no)

In November, the Centre for Global Health organized a successful postdoctoral programme with our Ethiopian partners Jimma University and St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College.

Events

SUSTAINIT has actively participated in a diverse array of events, such as the official inauguration of the Pandemic Centre, The Global Health Norway Conference 2023, and a seminar honoring Tore Godal and the Evolution of Global Health. A comprehensive list of these events is available here.

Research Groups

The Pandemic Centre has initiated its inaugural call for research groups, which is presently under evaluation, with the selected groups scheduled to commence in January 2024.

Publications

In 2023, the academic team at SUSTAINIT produced a total of 80 publications, which is a great result for such a small unit!

Examples

• Biermann, F., Sun, Y., Banik, D., Beisheim, M., Blomfield, M.J., Chasek, P., Hickmann, T., Pradhan, P., Senit, C.A. Four governance reforms to strengthen the SDGs. (2023). Science.
• Bengtsson-Palme, J., Abramova, A., Berendonk, T.U., Coelho, L.P., Forslund, S.K., Gschwind, R., Heikinheimo, A., Jarquin-Diaz, V.H., Khan, A.A., Klümper, U., Löber, U., Nekoro, M., Osinska, A.D., Perovic, S.U., Pitkänen, T., Rodland, E.K., Ruppe, E., Wasteson, Y., Wester, A.L., Zahra, R. Towards monitoring of antimicrobial resistance in the environment: For what reasons, how to implement it, and what are the data needs? (2023). Environment International. Elsevier.
• Engebretsen, E., Sharma, R., Sandset, T., Heggen, K.M., Ottersen, O.P., Clark, H., Greenhalgh, T. Teaching sustainable health care through the critical medical humanities. (2023). The Lancet.
• Aasheim, E.T., Bhopal, A.S., O'Brien K., Lie A.K., Nakstad E.R., Andersen, L.F. Climate Change and Health: a 2-week course for medical students to inspire change. (2023) The Lancet. 
• Greenhalgh, Trisha; Engebretsen, Eivind; Bal, Roland & Kjellström, Sofia (2023). Toward a Values-Informed Approach to Complexity in Health Care: Hermeneutic Review. Milbank Quarterly. ISSN 0887-378X. doi: 10.1111/1468-0009.12656.
• Rau Steuernagel, Carolina; Lam, Carolyn S P & Greenhalgh, Trisha (2023). Countering sex and gender bias in cardiovascular research requires more than equal recruitment and sex disaggregated analyses. The BMJ. ISSN 1756-1833. 382. doi: 10.1136/bmj-2023-075031.
• Wang, D., Bjørnstad, O. N., Lei, T., Sun, Y., Huo, J., Hao, Q., Zeng, Z., Zhu, S., Hallegatte, S., Li, R., Guan, D., & Stenseth, N. C. (2023). Supply chains create global benefits from improved vaccine accessibility. Nature Communications, 14(1), 1569. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37075-x
• Johannessen A, Stockdale AJ, Henrion MYR, Okeke E, Seydi M, Wandeler G, Sonderup M, Spearman CW, Vinikoor M, Sinkala E, Desalegn H, Fall F, Riches N, Davwar P, Duguru M, Maponga T, Taljaard J, Matthews PC, Andersson M, Mboup S, Sombie R, Shimakawa Y, Lemoine M. (2023) Systematic review and individual-patient-data meta-analysis of non-invasive fibrosis markers for chronic hepatitis B in Africa. Nature Communication, 14(1):45. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-35729-w.
• Stenseth, N. C., Schlatte, R., Liu, X., Pielke, R., Jr, Li, R., Chen, B., Bjørnstad, O. N., Kusnezov, D., Gao, G. F., Fraser, C., Whittington, J. D., Bai, Y., Deng, K., Gong, P., Guan, D., Xiao, Y., Xu, B., & Johnsen, E. B. (2023). How to avoid a local epidemic becoming a global pandemic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 120(10), e2220080120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2220080120