London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is Britain’s national school of public health and a leading postgraduate institution worldwide for research and postgraduate education in global health. Part of the University of London, the London School is the largest institution of its kind in Europe with a remarkable depth and breadth of expertise encompassing many disciplines. It is one of the highest-rated research institutions in the UK.

Its environment is a rich multicultural one: every year over 800 students come to the School from around 120 countries to study doctoral or masters degrees. The School has about 1200 staff drawn from around 45 nationalities.

There are research collaborations with over 100 countries throughout the world, utilizing our critical mass of multidisciplinary expertise which includes clinicians, epidemiologists, statisticians, social scientists, molecular biologists and immunologists. At any one time over 100 School staff are based overseas, particularly in Africa and Asia. We have a strong commitment to partnership with institutions in low and middle income countries to support the development of teaching and research capacity.

The School’s European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition (ECOHOST) was established in 1997 to conduct research and analyse policy on health and health care in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

The precise health problems these countries face are wide-ranging. Some are attributable to weaknesses in the delivery of effective health care. Most, however, are related to the adverse socio-economic circumstances that have prevailed. Even today, over a decade after the collapse of communism, nearly all of the Eastern transition countries – including those that recently joined the European Union – have lower life expectancy than the countries of Western Europe.

ECOHOST has built up a considerable body of research on health care and health policy issues. This work has been funded from a variety of sources including the UK Department for International Development (DFID), UNICEF, the European Commission and the World Bank.

It is also a partner in the European Observatory on Health Systems & Policies project, initiated by WHO with support from other international agencies and governments, to describe and understand the complex process of health care reform across Europe and Central Asia.