Università della Svizzera italiana

The Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) was established in 1996 and is one of the 12 certified public universities in Switzerland and member of swissuniversities. It is organised in five faculties: Economics, Communication, Architecture, Informatics, and BioMedicine. USI has been part of the SSPH+ since its very beginning. Prof. Gianfranco Domenighetti played a pioneering role in the development of Public Health in Switzerland by creating a bridge between the University, the Cantonal Health department, and Public Health Institutes in the rest of the country. The first institute at USI to join SSPH+ was the Institute of Economics (IdEP), who initiated in 2002 together with health economists from the Universities of Lausanne, Zurich, Geneva, and Bern the Swiss Network of Health Economics. When in 2005 it came to a merger with the Swiss Network of Public Health, leading to the birth of SSPH+, the economists claimed the “+” in SSPH would witness the role of economics in public health sciences. In the meantime a more effective integration of economics in public health sciences occurred and the preferred meaning of the “+” is to convey the Swissness of the School. The SSPH+ faculty at USI today mainly comes from the Faculty of Economics (6 Faculty members and 1 Fellow). IdEP has in fact been the hub of public health economics and policy work at USI. For many years, also the Institute of Public Communication (ICP) has been active in the SSPH+ with two faculty members based in the ICP. Since Domenighetti’s passing in 2017, one faculty member focused on health behaviour and behaviour change serves as the sole faculty from Communication Sciences and serves on the Foundation Board as the Vice President since 2017. In 2018, our new Faculty of BioMedicine was launched and a new professor of Public Health (E. Albanese) joined USI. He currently is the sole faculty member from USI’s Faculty of BioMedicine in the SSPH+. The USI now has three Faculties participating in the SSPH+ with 8 SSPH+ Faculty members and 1 Fellow.

Institute of Economics (IdEP)

The Institute of Economics (IdEP) regroups research and teaching activities in Economics and Public Management at the Università della Svizzera italiana. The faculty of IdEP actively promotes high level research publications by its members in the broad fields of applied public economics, labor and health economics.