Ulrich Laaser

Bielefeld University · Faculty of Health Sciences

The World Health Organization (WHO) is committed to empowering countries by implementing a gender, equity, and human rights approach in the health sector. The objective of this gender and inclusion analysis is to assess potential gender disparities of health sector management in the Kyrgyz Republic. The employed mixed-method approach takes advantag...

The central mission of the GHW-2030 multi-sectoral think tank is to contribute to the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by working toward achieving the education and health goals in cooperation with the Commonwealth Secretariat using an international interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary/transdisciplinary global One Health...

Aim: This study reviews the ability of the Russian Federation to reduce the high mortality until 2030 evenly across the country and in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Methods: We adopted the method suggested by Haenszel for estimating Premature Years of Life Lost for the age group <70 years and applied a projected reduction...

Aim: Over the past two decades, two catastrophic events caused a steep decline in health services in Liberia: the long-lasting civil war (1989-2003) and the weak response of the health system to the Ebola Viral Disease (EVD) outbreak (2013-2015). In early 2015 The Liberian Government reacted and developed a strategic health policy framework. This p...

Aim: Political decisions usually emerge from the competing interests of politicians, voters, and special interest groups. We investigated the applicability of an advanced methodological concept to determine whether certain institutional positions in a cooperating network have influence on the decision-making procedures. To that end, we made use of...

Professionalization of public health is important to advance public health education, training, and practice. In our opinion, there is no contradiction that the profession of public health consists of members of different other professions – which also have their own values and conducts. Yet, if professions work under the roof of public health, the...

Context: The ‘Northern Dimension on Public Health and Social Well-being’ is a platform for dialogue and cooperation of countries around the Baltic Sea, established in 2003, guided by the Sustainable Development Goal 3 on Health and Social Well-being and the Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region of the European Union adopted in 2009. In this paper we d...

The aim of this short report is to stimulate a discussion on the state of a public healthprofession in Europe and actions which need to be taken to authorise public healthprofessionals based on their competencies. While regulated professions such as medicaldoctors, nurses, lawyers, and architects can enjoy the benefits of the 2005/36/EC Directive a...

With the growth and complexity of current challenges such as globalization, health threats, and ageing society, financial constraints, and social and health inequalities, amultidisciplinary public health workforce is needed, supported by new skills and expertise. It has been demonstrated that public health education needs to include a wider range o...

The aim of this survey was to assess the intentions of corresponding authors for publishing again in the South Eastern European Journal of Public Health (SEEJPH), the aspects that they like most about the jour- nal, and things which can be improved by SEEJPH in order to be more attractive to potential contributors. A three-item questionnaire was se...

Aim: Montenegrin government is increasingly aware of the key role of women in the society and attempts to improve social cohesion among Montenegrin people. Precondition is a high degree of life satisfaction and happiness. Methods: We used the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) of 2018 to analyse the distribution and interaction of 22 potentia...

Aim: Regional collaboration has continuously contributed to the development of public health in the South Eastern Europe (SEE) region since 2000 when the Public Health Collaboration in SEE (PH-SEE) was initiated. This article looks into two frameworks for regional collaboration in the area of public health: a framework developed in 2004 by a networ...

Aim: Population aging has profoundly reshaped demographic landscapes in all South Eastern European (SEE) countries. The aim of this study was to provide a thorough comparative inter-country assessment on the speed of population aging in the entire SEE region for the period 1950-2010. Methods: Descriptive observational analysis of long-term trends o...

Aim: Liberia, situated at the West African coast, is composed of 15 counties with an economic gradient steeply decreasing from the Northwest to the Southeast. Health-related activities by government action in the 15 counties concentrate on the areas of family planning, antenatal and delivery care, as well as immunization, health workforce and infra...

Current economic, social, and environmental trajectories within most world regions are unsustainable. Interaction between bottom-up initiatives and top-down good governance is essential to change them. The One Health movement, made up of many organizations, groups, and individuals from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, seeks to redress the prese...

Vaccine hesitancy is a relatively new concept, developed by WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization in 2014 as a response to the growing awareness of the decline in global confidence in vaccination. Vaccine hesitancy is a context-specific behavioural phenomenon whose occurrence ranges between full acceptance and complete re...

Background Women's happiness and life satisfaction, often summarized as subjective wellbeing, are of great value for most individuals and are associated with various determinants. The countries of the Western Balkan are of particular interest after the political changes in the nineties. Are the women satisfied with their lives today? Methods We us...

Introduction: Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) along with unintended pregnancies, gender-based violence, and gender inequality represent a serious risk to reproductive health in adolescent age. Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) plays a central role among public health interventions designed to prepare young people for these challenges. The...

Introduction/Objective. Continuing Medical Education (CME) is a crucial element to keep the level of professionalism in the three key fields of medical education: pre-clinical, clinical, and public health. The profile of CME in Serbia has been analyzed for the years 2011 to 2017. Methods. Between 2011 and 2017, 11.557 courses of CME have been submi...

Full citation: Chernyavskiy, V., Wenzel, H., Mikhailova, J., Ivanova, A., Zemlyanova, E., Bjegovic-Mikanovic, V., Mikhailov, A. and Laaser, U. (2019) “Successful reduction of premature mortality in the Russian Federation and the countries around the Baltic Sea working together on Health and Social Well-being”, South Eastern European Journal of Pub...

Aim: This study reviews the ability of the Russian Federation to reduce the high mortality until 2030 evenly across the country and in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Methods: We adopted the method suggested by Haenszel for estimating Premature Years of Life Lost for the age group <70 years and applied a projected reduc...

Full citation: Chernyavskiy, V., Wenzel, H., Mikhailova, J., Ivanova, A., Zemlyanova, E., Bjegovic-Mikanovic, V., Mikhailov, A. and Laaser, U. (2020) “Can Russia’s high mortality return until 2030 to trajectory of the 1980-ies and reach the SDGs evenly across the country?”, South Eastern European Journal of Public Health (SEEJPH). doi: 10.4119/see...

Background To reach the targets of SDG3 not more than a decade is left. How do the Low and Middle-Income Countries in Northern Africa - in the immediate neighborhood to Europe - compare to the 15 members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and well-developed European countries around the Baltic Sea (the “Northern Dimension”)...

Background: This study reviews the ability of the Russian Federation to reduce the high mortality until 2030 evenly across the country and in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Methods: We adopted the method suggested by Haenzel for estimating Premature Years of Life Lost for the age group <70 years and applied a projected red...

Objectives: The Government of Liberia has set ambitious national health targets for 2021 to reduce the high maternal, newborn, and child mortality rate and to improve the related health services. Additionally, Sustainable Development Goal 3 provides a long-term target for 2030. The objective of this article is to analyze the gaps between the target...

Background: The Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) is confronted with challenges to improve education for public health professionals. In this article, we attempt to answer the question: Did ASPHER members improve their organization and programmes to enable their graduates to acquire the competences to tackle t...

Background: The United Nations Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals to succeed the Millennium Development Goals in September 2015. From a European perspective, the development of health in the countries of North Africa are of special interest as a critical factor of overall social development in Europe’s Mediterranean partners. In thi...

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) comprises 15-member states with an estimated population of 350 million. This account relates the present status of maternal, neonatal, and under-five-mortality to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets set for 2030. For each SDG indicator, progress observed was compared with that neede...

Background: There is a gap in knowledge on long term pace of population aging acceleration and related net-migration rate changes in WHO European Region and its adjacent MENA countries. We decided to compare European Union (EU-28) region with the EU Near Neighborhood Policy Region East and EU Near Neighborhood Policy Region South in terms of these...

Aim: Agreeing on a Code of Ethical Conduct is an essential step in the formation and definition of a public health profession in its own right. In this paper we attempt to identify a limited number of key ethical principles to be reflected as professional guidance. Methods: We used a consensus building approach based on narrative review of pivotal...

http://www.seejph.com/index.php/seejph/article/view/154/115

Objective: Inter-regional comparison of health-reform outcomes in south-eastern Europe (SEE). Methods: Macro-indicators were obtained from the WHO Health for All Database. Inter-regional comparison among post-Semashko, former Yugoslavia and prior-1989-free-market SEE economies was conducted. Results: United Nations Development Program Human De...

This opinion piece focuses on global health action by hands-on bottom-up practice: initiation of an organizational framework and securing financial efficiency are – however – essential, both clearly a domain of well-trained public health professionals. Examples of action are cited in the four main areas of global threats: planetary climate change,...

After the collapse of communist regimes in 1991, countries of Southeast Europe (SEE) have been confronted with political turmoil, civil conflicts, and a long-lasting period of socioeconomic transition. In the past two decades, all these countries have embarked into extensive health care reforms that aimed at diversifying and increasing the revenue...

Laaser U, Beluli F. Special Volume 2016, A Global Public Health Curriculum (2nd Edition). OPEN ACCESS at: SEEJPH 2016, Vol. 0. DOI 10.4119/UNIBI/SEEJPH-2015-106 URL: www.seejph.com/index.php/seejph/article/view/106

Objective The present study aimed to identify the role of mother’s education in the nutritional status of children aged 2–5 years in Serbia. Design Nationally representative population-based study. Age- and gender-specific BMI percentiles of children were analysed. In accordance with the WHO growth reference, children with BMI less than the 5th pe...

The central mission of the GHW-2030 multi-sectoral think tank is to contribute to the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by working toward achieving the education and health goals in cooperation with the Commonwealth Secretariat using an international interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary/transdisciplinary global One Health...

Aim: Regional collaboration has continuously contributed to the development of public health in the South Eastern Europe (SEE) region since 2000 when the Public Health Collaboration in SEE (PH-SEE) was initiated. This article looks into two frameworks for regional collaboration in the area of public health: a framework developed in 2004 by a networ...

http://www.seejph.com/index.php/seejph/article/view/89

Professionalization of public health is important to advance public health education, training, and practice. In our opinion, there is no contradiction that the profession of public health consists of members of different other professions – which also have their own values and conducts. Yet, if professions work under the roof of public health, the...

The pace of population aging has remained uneven among globally leading emerging markets across past decades. The aim of this paper was to describe the trends in population aging and health expenditures between BRICS and N-11 nations. UN’s Office for Economic and Social Affairs estimates on historical values of population aging demographic indicato...

Training is the systematic acquisition of skills, rules, concepts, or attitudes and is one of the most important components in any organization's strategy. There is increasing demand for formal and informal training programs especially for physicians in leadership positions. This study determined the learning outcomes after a specific training prog...

Laaser U, Bjegovic-Mikanovic V, Lueddeke G. Epilogue: Global Health, Governance, and Education. In: Lueddeke G (ed.) Global Population Health and Well-Being in the 21st Century – Towards New Paradigms, Policy, and Practice; Chapter 10. Springer, New York: 2015. ISBN 978-082612767-9.

With the growth and complexity of current challenges such as globalization, health threats, and ageing society, financial constraints, and social and health inequalities, a multidisciplinary public health workforce is needed, supported by new skills and expertise. It has been demonstrated that public health education needs to include a wider range...

Aim: Population aging has profoundly reshaped demographic landscapes in all South Eastern European (SEE) countries. The aim of this study was to provide a thorough comparative inter-country assessment on the speed of population aging in the entire SEE region for the period 1950-2010. Methods: Descriptive observational analysis of long-term trends...

The aim of this short report is to stimulate a discussion on the state of a public health profession in Europe and actions which need to be taken to authorise public health professionals based on their competencies. While regulated professions such as medical doctors, nurses, lawyers, and architects can enjoy the benefits of the 2005/36/EC Directiv...

Aim: Political decisions usually emerge from the competing interests of politicians, voters, and special interest groups. We investigated the applicability of an advanced methodological concept to determine whether certain institutional positions in a cooperating network have influence on the decision-making procedures. To that end, we made use of...

http://www.seejph.com/index.php/seejph/article/view/8/7

FULL TEXT: http://www.vma.mod.gov.rs/vsp-02_2015.pdf Background: Continuing Medical Education (CME), conceptualised as Lifelong Learning (LLL) aims at improving human resources and continuing professional development. Various documents of European institutions underline its key importance. The Medical Faculties in Serbia are to revisit their CME a...

FULL TEXT: http://www.seejph.com/population-aging-from-1950-to-2010-in-seventeen-transitional-countries-in-the-wider-region-of-south-eastern-europe/ Aim: Population aging has profoundly reshaped demographic landscapes in all South Eastern European (SEE) countries. The aim of this study was to provide a thorough comparative inter-country assessment...

The Schools and Departments of Public Health in Europe accept global responsibility, guided by the two key principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. They act as part of the international community, focusing on education for practice and research, in order to contribute to the global public goods essential for health. However, it is well-known that...

Background: There have been various consultations on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by different groups. However, even if it is clear that the health sector has led the development success of the MDGs, only a few MDG reports consider public health experts' points of view and these are mainly government driven. Designs: The World Federat...

FULL TEXT: http://www.seejph.com/the-united-nations-millennium-development/ Most Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) show considerable progress on a global scale, but advance is inequitable if one, for example, compares the improvement in health between Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Asia, or even other developing countries (1). Whereas health and...

FULL TEXT: http://www.seejph.com/shaping-and-authorising-a-public-health-profession/ The aim of this short report is to stimulate a discussion on the state of a public health profession in Europe and actions which need to be taken to authorise public health professionals based on their competencies. While regulated professions such as medical doct...