Network for research and development of the governance and organization of Swedish health services

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of questions about the governance and organization of health care.

A scientifically anchored debate is needed given the major challenges faced by the Swedish health care system including staff shortages, an increasing proportion of multi-morbid elderly, low productivity, and a lack of collaboration between actors.

Today, Swedish research on healthcare governance and organization is fragmented and spread across many disciplines and universities.

Therefore, we see a great need to gather expertise in order to provide both a broad and in-depth picture of how healthcare is governed and what changes to the system are necessary.

The purpose of the network is to constitute a forum where researchers from a variety of disciplines can jointly identify key research issues, develop ideas and theories, and compile the state of knowledge regarding the governance and organization of health care.

The network will include both junior and senior researchers and organize annual workshops where ongoing research and new results are presented.

Additional meetings will take place in different constellations among the network members to, for example, work on joint research projects and plan exchanges between higher education institutions.

The practical challenges facing the health care sector and their potential solutions will be given particular focus at these meetings.

That the network includes participants from both the faculties of Medicine and of Social Sciences enables a unique discussion across subject boundaries and universities and leads to an increased understanding of the vast and complex research area that constitutes health care.

Concrete outputs will consist of scientific publications, an electronic newsletter sent to external societal actors, and a report written in Swedish aimed at important societal actors in the area where the governance of Swedish health care is considered from different points of view.