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 School 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. The revival and development of our department today would be unimaginable without these names and their scientific and pedagogical contributions.

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 Informatics 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 Department of Hygiene and Social Medicine was established on December 8, 2008 (Order No. 3501-1/059 dated July 10, 2008) as part of the reestablishment of School of Medicine (formerly the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine).

The first head of the department was Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Heorhii Danylenko, who led it until June 2018. He is a renowned specialist in the field of child and adolescent hygiene both in Ukraine and internationally and currently serves as the Director of the State Institution "Institute for the Health Protection of Children and Adolescents of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine".

In June 2018, the department was headed by Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Zhanna Sotnikova-Meleshkina, who held the position until August 2023.

From September 2023, the duties of the head of the department were performed by Doctor of Medical Sciences, Senior Research Fellow Nataliia Mikhanovska, who officially assumed the position of Head of the Department of Hygiene and Social Medicine in November 2024. She is a renowned and highly qualified specialist in the field of mental health for children and adolescents.

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 practical classes, 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 concluded.

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