SCOHOST
The Stockholm Centre on Health of Societies in Transition (SCOHOST) is a research centre that examines issues related to health, welfare, and population in Eastern Europe.
About us
About us
Eastern Europe is a region where particularly problematic developments have taken place in public health and demography during recent decades. The life expectancy of men in the former Soviet republics is still at the levels where it was in the 1970s, while since the early 1990s population loss has constituted a serious obstacle for the economic and social development of these societies. At the same time, there are several countries in Eastern Europe that after the initial shock of transition have experienced continuous positive public health developments.
In 1997, Södertörn University initiated the formation of a research group studying issues of social change and health in Eastern Europe. The group now forms a centre named SCOHOST, the abbreviation for the Stockholm Centre on Health of Societies in Transition. Its main purpose is to monitor and analyse social, demographic and health developments in Central and Eastern Europe with a particular focus on Russia and the countries of the Baltic Sea region.
Research at SCOHOST can be divided into the following broad themes:
- Inequalities in health, between social groups, regions, and countries
- Public health in a historical perspective
- Social relations and health
- Health- and population-related issues in urban environments
- Violence
- Mental health and suicide
- Alcohol and tobacco consumption
- Adolescent health
- Population and population policies
SCOHOST is currently led by Ilkka Henrik Mäkinen, Professor of Sociology. At the moment seven other researchers also work at SCOHOST. In addition, two PhD students in sociology are being supervised at SCOHOST and participate in the centre's activity.
Since its formation, SCOHOST has to a large extent been financed by the Swedish Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies through grants for different research projects.
SCOHOST cooperates with a number of European research partners, including ECOHOST at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, and the Institute of Social and Economic Studies of Population (ISESP) in Moscow.
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