In a new collaboration agreement, the Department of Public Health at Aarhus University and the Central Denmark Region’s research and consultancy unit DEFACTUM have formally agreed that they will jointly work to strengthen and bring together the research and educational environment in the public health area. The goal is to create synergy between the efforts of both parties, so that the interplay between research, teaching and practice all come together.

Agreement with specific initiatives

According to Department Head Ole Bækgaard from the Department of Public Health, the strength of the new agreement is that it does not only list the aims of the new collaboration, but also clearly specifies how the collaboration can be implemented in practice.

“Neither we nor DEFACTUM are interested in collaboration agreements that just act as declarations of intent. We’re ambitious and we’ve tried to be as specific as possible in the new agreement by identifying joint opportunities for strengthening the public health area. At the same time, the agreement also focuses on professional collaboration supported by a clear management structure, so that both employees and management can see what closer collaboration can result in. The collaboration must make sense to the individual employee and be easy to get involved in," he says.

Strong foundation

Expectations are high for Mette Kjølby who is deputy director at DEFACTUM when it comes to the new collaboration agreement:

"With the collaboration agreement, we have a chance to strengthen an already strong public health environment in the region and at the university. We’ve got a strong foundation to build on so that we can together realise the full potential of public health research and the benefits this will have for our citizens,” she says.

What’s in the collaboration agreement?

The new collaboration agreement makes it possible for DEFACTUM employees to teach on degree programmes which the Department of Public Health is responsible for. Not only as visiting lecturers, but as integrated members of the department’s teaching teams.

In addition, the department and DEFACTUM will collaborate on:

• Joint funding applications and research projects.
• Shared employees who can contribute to knowledge exchange and bridge-building between the two parties.
• Attractive working conditions and career development for shared employees, including, among other things, the possibility of workload reduction in connection with fixed-term employment in the partner organisation.
• Joint communication of research results and the holding of academic events.

Read the complete collaboration agreement (PDF) (available in Danish only).