Karl Gauffin Senior Lecturer/Researcher

During the years 2021-2025, I have mainly worked with teaching and course development.

Course manager

• Global health in a changing world, 7.5 ECTS, graduate level (MSc), Stockholm University
• Technological development, digitalisation and public health, 7.5 ECTS, undergraduate level (BSc), Stockholm University (course given in Swedish)
• Epidemiological development, infectious diseases and public health, 7.5 ECTS, undergraduate level (BSc), Stockholm University (course given in Swedish)
• Conflicting goals and public health, 7.5 ECTS, undergraduate level (BSc), Stockholm University (course given in Swedish) 

Educational planning

• Coordinator for development of Bachelor's programme in public health sciences, 2021-2025 (programme given in Swedish).

Guest lecturer on graduate level courses in public health sciences and psychology at Karolinska institutet and Stockholm University

• Infectious diseases and public health
• Theory in public health research and explanatory models of health inequality
• Gender and health inequalities
• A life course perspective on alcohol related disorders

The unequal pandemic: investigating the relationship between health equity and political responses to covid-19, principal investigator (2023-2025)

The project aims to investigate the broad connection between the political response to covid-19 and social inequality in health. Countries' political responses to covid-19 share a common goal of protecting public health, yet are highly diverse in both design and outcome. In a set of three integrated studies, the purpose of this project is to investigate how social inequalities in health have been affected by political determinants during the covid-19 pandemic. In the first study, we aim to analyse how the reciprocal relationship between political responses and global burden of covid-19 has developed over time. In the second study, we will generate a typology of political responses in European countries, taking into consideration how they explicitly address, discursively frame and implicitly affect health equity. In the third study, we will use Nordic registers to decompose inequalities in mortality and hospitalisations by their underlying causes and compare trends before and during the pandemic, using the results of the two first studies as an interpretative framework.

The project is funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Forte).

Pathways to health among individuals with experience of childhood adversity: A risk and resilience framework (RISE), researcher and PhD co-supervisor, department of public health sciences, Stockholm University (2020 - 2022)

This project aims to investigate the connection between childhood adversity and health later in life, while considering the mitigating role of resilience. The project is based on the newly updated Stockholm Birth Cohort Multigenerational Study, which includes 14,562 individuals born in 1953 in Stockholm. The cohort is followed from birth to retirement age in 2008.

The project is funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Forte).

Self-employment, precarious work and health inequalities, postdoc project at the department for public health sciences, Stockholm University (2018-2019)

This project aims to investigate precarious employment as a social determinant of health. Precarious work has been described as "non-standard employment that is poorly paid, insecure, unprotected, and cannot support a household" and is highly interlinked with more traditional classifications of social class. 

By using a large Swedish register data material on all native- and foreign-born residents in Sweden who were born between 1972 and 1997, the project will investigate how precarious work is associated with all-cause and cause-specific mortality and morbidity in different population groups. Particular attention will be paid to different types of self-employment, as this form of employment often strips the worker of rights that regular employees are entitled to. In addition, the project will focus on the growing immigrant population in Sweden, which is over-represented in precarious work.

A methodological aim of the project is to develop a register-based measure of precarious employment. In combination with survey-based measures, such a tool will increase the opportunity to better understand the phenomenon of precarious work in Sweden. 

The project is funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Forte).

Coming of Age in Exile (CAGE), researcher, study coordinator and deputy team leader for Sweden, University of Copenhagen (2015-2020)

This large Nordic research project aims to study health and socioeconomic development among young refugees in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Researchers in the project conduct quantitative register studies, policy analyses and qualitiative interview studies to investigate education, health and labour market integration among young refugees arriving to the Nordic countries in the late decades of the 20th Century. 

In December 2017 the a report by Karl Gauffin and Eveliina Lyytinen was published: Working for integration: A comparative analysis of policies impacting labour market access among young immigrants and refugees in the Nordic countries

The final report of the CAGE project was published in December 2020.

The project is funded by NordForsk.

Social inequality in childhood and alcohol related disorders later in life, PhD student, Karolinska institutet (2011-2015).

This PhD project aimed to investigate the interrelation between different forms of childhood social inequality and alcohol related disorder later in life. The project utilised a register-based data material including the entire Swedish population born between 1973 and 1984. The results of the project are presented in the thesis Embodiment of inequality - The translation of childhood social inequality to alcohol related health disparities later in life