The preliminary programme on the 2007 pre-conference meeting on sickness-absence research is available here.

Scientific committee
Sören Brage, PhD, MD, Oslo University, Norway - soren.brage@medisin.uio.no
Peter Donceel, Professor, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium - peter.donceel@med.kuleuven.be
Gunnel Hensing, Professor, Göteborg University, Sweden - gunnel.hensing@socmed.gu.se
Angelique de Rijk, PhD, Maastrich University, the Netherlands - A.deRijk@BEOZ.unimaas.nl

President
Kristina Alexanderson
Professor. Head of section
Sectionen of Personal Injury Prevention
Department of Clinical Neuroscience
Berzelius väg 3
Karolinska Institutet
SE-171 77 Stockholm
Sweden
 Tel: + 46 8 524 832 00
Fax: + 46 8 524 832 05
Mobil: + 46 702 162 099
E-mail: kristina.alexanderson@ki.se
web site:   http://ki.se/ip

The Section of Social Security and Health was founded during the EUPHA annual conference in Paris 2000. The section currently has 426 members. The aim of this section is to increase the knowledge base on factors that influence the occurrence of sickness absence and disability pension in general and due to different diagnoses, at individual or population levels, to get a base for health-promoting and preventive actions. This includes research within different scientific disciplines, from different perspectives, and with different scientific methods, both quantitative and qualitative, concerning both the occurrence and consequences of sickness absence, how physicians sickness certify, problems experienced by different professionals or the sick person regarding sickness absence, as well as economic or legislative aspects.

The section is to:

• Promote and strengthen research on sickness absence and scientific exchange within the area.
• Encourage the presentation of sickness-absence studies at the annual conferences of EUPHA. Oral presentation of abstracts should be brought together at the same sessions.
• At each conference arrange a workshop on methodological, scientific and/or interventiv aspects regarding sickness absence.
• Work for a high scientific standard of studies on sickness absence.
• Encourage the publication of studies on sickness absence.
• Map the existing sickness absence research in Europe and inform the researchers about the section and invite them to participate.
• Arrange a pre-conference meeting for sickness-absence researchers in connection to the EUPHA annual conferences.

For this we need an active network!
If you want to be a member of this section, which involves being included on the e-mail list of researchers on sickness absence, disability pension, and social security, please contact the President of the Section Kristina Alexanderson: kristina.alexanderson@ki.se

Activities

The Section has arranged the following workshops at the EUPHA annual meetings.
2000 Sickness absence and Public Health – current knowledge base
2001 Physician’s sickness certification practice
2002 Research on sickness absence in different countries
2003 How to assess work ability in relation to sickness certification?
2004 A systematic review of studies on sickness absence and disability pension
2005 Cooperation between different actors regarding promotion of return to work of sickness absentees
2006 Evaluation of Return-to-work interventions for sickness absentees: alternatives to randomised controlled studies
2007 The implementation of the ‘International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health’ (ICF) in disability assessment

The Section has arranged the following Pre-conference meetings
2003 The First Pre-conference meeting on sickness-absence research
2004 Theoretical approaches and models in sickness-absence studies
2005 Research on health consequences of sickness absence and disability pension
2006 Research on sickness absence and mental health
2007 Economic Theories and Methods in Sickness Absence Research

Background information
More knowledge is needed on the associations between social security and health. One important aspect of this is social consequences of ill health and how this is dealt with in different systems.

Sickness absence is often referred to both as a major public-health problem and as an indicator of such problems. Data on sickness absence are increasingly used in public-health research. Ill health leading to reduced work capacity is a universal phenomenon for human being and sickness-absence insurance is an essential part of each modern welfare state. The relation between different types of such insurance systems and public health is hardly at all studied. There are large variations in sickness absence with social class, age, gender and ethnicity. The scientific knowledge base regarding sickness absence and disability pension is very insufficient, in spite of the great consequences it has on individual, family, work place, and society. There are specific methodological problems regarding this research area as the sickness-absence systems vary between nations and over time. There are, furthermore, great variations in terminology, measures, and theories used.