A survey targeting ASPHER members was launched in 2010/11, being a first initiative in improving ethics education in European Schools of Public Health. An 8-items questionnaire collected information on teaching of ethics in public health. A 52% response rate (43/82) revealed that almost all of the schools (95% out of 40 respondents with valid data) included the teaching of ethics in at least one of its programmes. They also expressed the need of support, (e.g.: a model curriculum (n=25), case studies (n=24)), which indicates further work to be met by the ASPHER Working Group on Ethics and Values in Public Health.

Violence against women is an acknowledged public and global health problem which has adverse consequences for women’s health. Education, especially higher education, has long been identified as an important arena for addressing the problem and promoting gender equality. Two measures recently put in place in the Swedish higher education have brought the role of the sector into focus. The first is the inclusion of gender equality as a measurable outcome in quality assurance in higher education. The second measure is the amendment of the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance to include mandatory knowledge of VAW in the degree programme of seven selected relevant professional groups. The potentials of both measures to positively contribute to the gender equality discourse, as well as improving capacity building for the public health workforce who encounter VAW, are discussed.

Studies have shown that a high proportion of refugees have been subjected to potentially traumatic experiences (PTEs). PTEs, including torture, are powerful predictors of mental ill health. This paper reports a review of refugee trauma history self-report measures used in population studies.

Methods

A review of existing instruments and checklists, up to September 2015, was performed.

Results

The types of measures for refugee trauma history vary from semi-structured interviews and medical records to extensive multi-item trauma-checklists. The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) was the most commonly used instrument for measuring trauma history among refugee populations. Few checklists included PTEs during the flight.

Conclusion

Trauma history checklists are often used as a tool to control for background variables when studying refugees’ mental health and have mostly been developed in clinical or semi-clinical settings. There is a need for acceptable, reliable and valid brief checklists for measuring trauma in refugees, for the purpose of performing larger scale population studies.