Short history and background
Compared to our neighbouring countries, the academic anchoring of our subject began quite early, after having a long history in Anglo-Saxon countries, namely the USA and Great Britain. It began when, in the 1950s and early 1960s, a number of doctors from Switzerland, on their own initiative and often at their own expense, completed further training in public health and discovered modern developments within the fields of epidemiology and public health. Later, the National Fund of Switzerland offered scholarships to obtain a Masters of Public Health (MPH), which led to Switzerland having approximately 60 trained specialists in this field until the introduction of its own MPH training courses in the early 1990s.
A pioneer of this wave was Meinrad Schär, considered one of the first social and preventive medicine specialist in Switzerland. At the end of the 1950s, after returning from the USA where he obtained a MPH, he became vice-director of the Swiss Federal Health Office (today's Federal Office of Public Health) and received a lectureship at the University of Zurich. At the beginning of the 1960s, together with the head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs, Federal Councillor Tschudi, he developed a decree that introduced social and preventive medicine as a new examination subject for the medical state examination. In 1964, the Federal Council passed the corresponding resolution, and in 1968 the medical faculties had to examine the subject for the first time.
Zurich, Lausanne and Geneva set up new institutes in view of the new teaching task, while in Bern Meinrad Schär initially fulfilled a teaching assignment from Zurich as a transitional solution.
In April 1971, on the basis of a resolution passed by the government council in December 1970, the Bern Institute was established. Prof. Theodor Abelin took office as the first head of the institute following a successful career at the Harvard School of Public Health (today they remain one of our key international partners). Prof. Abelin lead the institute until his retirement in 2000.
On 1 May 2002, the Government Council of the Canton of Bern appointed Prof. Dr. med. Matthias Egger as full professor of epidemiology and public health and the new director of ISPM. After studying medicine in Bern and undergoing clinical training in surgery, paediatrics and internal medicine, Matthias Egger trained as a British Council scholar at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, receiving a Master’s degree in Epidemiology, and subsequently researched and taught in the UK at the University College London, Glasgow University, Bern (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, as part of a PROSPER scholarship from the Swiss National Science Foundation) and, as part of an EU project, in Nicaragua for several years, Glasgow University), Bern (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, as part of a PROSPER grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation) and, as part of an EU project, for several years in Nicaragua.
Since 1999, Matthias Egger has worked at the University of Bristol, where he headed the Division of Health Services Research in the Department of Social Medicine and was promoted to Professor of Clinical Epidemiology.
His research interests include methodological issues in clinical epidemiology and biostatistics, as well as applied issues in health systems research, socio-economic factors and health, and sexually transmitted infections, particularly HIV/AIDS.
Matthias Egger is a member of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians, London, is active in various international working groups, and is a much sought-after expert in the field. He is active in numerous international working groups and is a much sought-after reviewer. In 2017, Prof. Egger was appointed President of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Following this, he stepped down as director of ISPM, but remains a prominent member of our academic community.
