Fourth expert group meeting on cultural contexts of health and well-being

News | Posted on Friday 27 April 2018

A report on Sanjoy Bhattacharya’s attendance at a recent WHO Expert Committee meeting

This week Sanjoy Bhattacharya (Professor in the History of Medicine, Department of History & Head of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories) represented the University of York at the Fourth WHO Regional Office for Europe expert group meeting on Cultural Contexts of Health and Well-being.

An appreciation of cultural contexts has long been central to the work of WHO. But with the adoption of Health 2020, the European health policy framework, more emphasis is being placed on the perceived well-being of populations. The WHO Regional Office for Europe is deeply interested in investigating how cultural factors affect health and well-being. For more information see http://www.euro.who.int/en/data-and-evidence/cultural-contexts-of-health.

The two day expert group meeting, held on 26th and 27th April 2018 at the Wellcome Trust’s headquarters in London, was intended to review the progress of key outputs and identify new areas of work between research clusters working on the cultural contexts of health. Updates were given on the work of WHO Collaborating Centres into knowledge translation activities, publications, and future strategies.

The Department of History’s Centre for Global Health Histories has been a designated WHO Collaborating Centre since 2013, with this status renewed for a successive four year period in 2017. You can read more about the WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories’ activities at https://www.york.ac.uk/history/global-health-histories/about/who-collaborating-centre/.