WHO Collaborating Centre, Edinburgh
The Centre for Population Health Sciences at the University of Edinburgh has been officially designated the World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Population Health Research and Training.
Jointly co-chaired by Professor Harry Campbell and Professor Igor Rudan, they are looking forward to continuing the Centre's fruitful collaboration with the WHO and UNICEF.
The main lines of contribution of the new WHO Collaborating Centre to the activities of the World Health Organization will be co-ordinating the Global Health Epidemiology Reference Group (GHERG) and participating in Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group's (CHERG) work. Both activities aim to continuously fill the gaps in epidemiological information for global health and support WHO's estimates of the global burden of disease.
Moreover, the new Collaborating Centre will be expected to:-
- Continue developing methods for setting investment priorities in global health (CHNRI and EQUIST methods) and find new areas to apply them, to set priorities in investments for global health and development at the national, regional and global level
- Advise the WHO on the development of international biobanks in low and middle-income countries, aiming to transfer genomic technologies to less developed settings and use them to generate discoveries that could improve health of mothers and children world-wide.
The designation of the WHO Collaborative Centre is also expected to further increase the visibility of the Masters course in Public Health (MPH) offered at the Centre, which could develop into a recruitment base for internships at the WHO and UNICEF for the best graduates.
The new collaboration will also benefit from the continuing publication of the Journal of Global Health by the Edinburgh University Global Health Society, which voices independent views of academic experts in global health matters.