History of Department of Hygiene and Social Medicine

The Department of Hygiene of Kharkiv University dates back to the 1970s, 19 century when it was founded as a part of the Faculty of Medicine and started its rapid development. Jacobii ArkadiiIvanovich, Popov Mykhayl Fedorovich, Raevskyi Arkadii Aleksandrovich, Liashchenko Pavlo Nikolaevich, Korshun Stepan Vasylevich, Favre Vladimir - all these eminent scientists, professors, private Associate Professors of our faculty laid the foundations of the study of hygiene at Kharkiv Imperial University and scientific researches in this area. Without these names, without their scientific and pedagogical contributions it is impossible to imagine the revival and development of our Department today.

Until 2008 such subjectsas Hygiene, Social Medicine and Nutrition were studied at the Department of General and Clinical Immunology and Allergology, headed by Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Mykola Popov, and such subjectsas Medical Iinformatics and the European standards of computer literacy were taught at the Department of computer, technical and mathematical modeling in medicine, which existed from 1998 to 2008 and was headed by Doctor of physical and technical sciences, Professor Alexander Martynenko.

The modern Department of Hygiene and Social Medicine was established a few years after the resumption of the Faculty of Medicine (in the past - the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine) - December 8, 2008 (Order №3501 - 1/059 of July 10, 2008).

From the moment of creation of the Department until June 2018 the head of the Department was Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Danylenko Hryhoriy Mykolayovych, who is a well-known specialist in the field of hygiene of children and adolescents in Ukraine and beyond, and now - Director of the State Institution «Institute of Public Health of children and adolescence of NAMS of Ukraine »

Since June 2018 till now the Department is headed by the Candidate of Medical Sciences, Associate Professor Sotnikova-Meleshkina Zhanna Vladislavivna.

The material and technical support of the Department over time has reached a level that meets international standards. The lectures are held in classrooms equipped with multimedia systems and computers with access to the University's local area network and Internet. For conducting practicals, laboratories and seminars at the disposal of the Department there are a number of educational classrooms equipped with multimedia equipment, necessary posters and schemes.

In the educational process, modern instruments for assessing public health and the quality of the environment are always widely used. At the Department a Students’ Scientific Circle was created and successfully functioning, whose members repeatedly presented their scientific works at students’ scientific-practical conferences.

The Department is constantly expanding its activity both in Ukraine and abroad. Collaboration with University of Aberdeen (UK) includes working on a collaborative project "Heart rate variability: nonlinear analysis" under the Microsoft Azure Research program. The Department participates in the IBM Academic Initiative. A joint project with the University of Barcelona (Spain), the Roma University (Italy), the University of Aberdeen (UK) is being prepared for participation in Horizon2020 (EU), with which agreements on sharing of experience, scientific cooperation and joint research practice have been conсluded.

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