Primary health care services are designed to serve the residents throughout their life stages, addressing a wide range of tasks related to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and care.
The population is increasing, and the number of elderly people is increasing. More people survive severe illnesses and accidents but may require more assistance.
Patients are discharged from hospitals earlier than before, shifting responsibilities from specialized healthcare to primary healthcare services in municipalities.
New medical and technological possibilities are also increasing the pressure om primary health care, while budgets are tightening, and there are fewer hands available to perform the tasks.
All of this underscores the need for an improvement in the knowledge base of primary health and care services.
There is a need for better systems to identify knowledge gaps so that prioritizing research, development, and innovation aligns better with needs of users and society.
In parallel, there is a need to invest in implementing evidence-based practice, meaning that health care personnel learn to keep up with the knowledge development in their field.
This will require increased research activity in various areas. The research network aims to contribute to this by facilitating better collaboration between strong academic communities across the university and the practical field.
Ambition
The research network aims to be a facilitator and contribute to harnessing the potential within the academic breadth and strong expertise of our faculty to strengthen research in, with and for primary care.
Collaboration
The Faculty of Health Sciences offers a broad educational portfolio in the field of health sciences, and primary health care serves as a vital learning and research arena for all our disciplines.
The faculty has collaboration agreements with several municipalities and regions around Oslo, aiming to address among others, matters of mutual interest in research and innovation relevant to the services.
The faculty is already engaged in several research projects related to and in collaboration with primary health in municipalities in our region.
