Address: Institutionen för hälso- och vårdvetenskap (HV), Linnaeus University, Stagneliusgatan 14 B, SE-392 34 Kalmar, Sweden
Web page: http://lnu.se/faculty-of-health-and-life-sciences/departments-at-the-faculty/department-of-health-and-care-sciences?l=en
Contact person: Professor Katarina Swahnberg, phone: +46 (0)480 446977
South Asia related research
Katarina Swahnberg has worked for many years at the Division of Gender and Medicine, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine (IKE), Linköping University, but moved to Kalmar on 1 January 2013, where she has been appointed Professor in Health Sciences and Global Health.
She defended her doctoral dissertation on ”The Prevalence of Gender Violence. Studies of four kinds of Abuse in five Nordic Countries”, at the Division of Women’s Health, Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine in Linköping on 4 June 2003.
At Linköping University, Katarina was strongly involved in both educational and research collaboration with South Asia, especially with India and Nepal. More information.
Together with with Sunil Kumar Joshi, Professor in Community Medicine at Kathmandu Medical College (affiliated to Kathmandu University), she is involved in a collaborative research project entitled and the project is entitled ”Hidden Issue: Women and Girls Trafficking in Nepal”. The project received a planning grant from the Swedish Research Links (Asian–Swedish research partnership programme) in 2009, and will hopefully get more funding to take ahead. The background is the situation where Nepal has evolved as a ”sending country”, a central part in global trafficking. Surveys reveal that 70 out of 75 districts within Nepal are vulnerable to trafficking. The main aim of the research project is to contribute to the prevention of trafficking of women and girls and promote rehabilitative measures in order to attain a better society and healthier life of the victims. The empirical study will be conducted in Nepal. More information.
SASNET‘s deputy director Lars Eklund met Katarina Swahnberg and Sunil Kumar Joshi during his visit to Nepal in November 2012. Read his report.
Advance project
Katarina Swahnberg is involved in a major international collaborative research project, entitled Advance. It focuses on gender-based violence (GBV), prevalent around the world and covers a range of events which pose significant risks for the physical, sexual and psychological health of women and children, in addition to their social and economic well-being. The ADVANCE study focuses on violence that occurs within families – domestic violence. The overall project objective is to improve antenatal care services for victims of domestic violence in Nepal and Sri Lanka in order to reduce maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. Go for the Advance home page.
In Nepal, secondary research aims include analysing how GBV has been integrated into Nepali health policies and systems in order to inform other countries considering similar policy responses, and to develop culturally- and contextually-sensitive tools for identifying women experiencing domestic violence in antenatal care settings. In Sri Lanka, secondary research aims include assessing the prevalence of domestic violence experienced by pregnant women in: (i) Colombo district and (ii) the estate sectors of Badulla district, to determine the prevalence and consequences of abuse perpetrated by health care workers in antenatal care settings in Colombo district, and to assess the availability, acceptability and quality of antenatal services for pregnant women experiencing domestic violence in the estate sectors of Badulla district.
ADVANCE was initiated by partners in Nepal and Sri Lanka, and is now a research collaboration of four scientific institutions. The coordinating institution is the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. The collaborating institution in Nepal is Kathmandu University (KU), including two affiliate institutes: Dhulikhel Hospital & Kathmandu Medical College and Teaching Hospital. The collaborating institution in Sri Lanka is the University of Sri Jayewardenepura in Colombo. The final partner institution is the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The research team also includes advisors from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in Baltimore (USA) and Linnaeus University in Kalmar (Sweden).
The Principal Investigators are Berit Schei, Professor of Women’s Health, Department of Public Health and General Practice, Faculty of Medicine at NTNU in Trondheim; and Sunil Kumar Joshi in Kathmandu.