Jes Søgaard, who is head of the Danish Cancer Society, has been appointed honorary professor at Aarhus University. The appointment will strengthen the university's profile within the area of health economics, an area facing major challenges now and in the years to come.

2014.09.09 | Helle Horskjær Hansen

Jes Søgaard has spent 35 years carrying out research into health services and, in particular, health economics. And now he has been affiliated with Aarhus University as honorary professor. Here he will help to ensure that Aarhus University's expertise is as strong as possible in the research field of health economics.

Dean of the Faculty of Health Allan Flyvbjerg is pleased that Jes Søgaard has been affiliated with the university.

"We are sending a clear signal to the politicians showing that the university will actively help to solve the major challenges for health economics that the municipalities and regions increasingly face now and in the future," says Allan Flyvbjerg.

One of the challenges is that the population will demand more health services without more pairs of hands being available to deliver the services – and mostly likely without much more money being available.

In a dialogue with politicians

Jes Søgaard also sees great potential in the collaboration.

"My research is very much orientated towards application and often very targeted towards implementation. If the challenges facing the healthcare sector are to be solved optimally then we need both application-orientated research and the more in-depth and theoretical research within the university world," he says.

Jes Søgaard's main area of work is no longer academic research. It is knowledge dissemination of research to develop the Danish healthcare sector.

"Research often has to be translated for the political system and that dialogue is also important. The professorship is important for me as it gives me a formal affiliation with academic research, among other things in relation to the supervision of student projects and to facilitate connections between the work of my employees at the Danish Cancer Society and the university’s research," he says.

It is not the first time Jes Søgaard has collaborated with the university. In the period 1984 -1987 he was assistant professor at what was then the Institute of Social Medicine. Jes Søgaard has also taught at Aarhus University on the Master’s degree programme in Public Health with special responsibility for the degree programme's social science content, and in 2013 he was employed in a shared position at the university.

Jes Søgaard is the author of a many scientific articles and he has also contributed a number of chapters to various textbooks.

Further information

Professor Jes Søgaard
Aarhus University, Department of Clinical Medicine
Direct tel:
+45 2147 6952
jes.sogaard@gmail.com