Needs and use of health services and disability benefits with emphasis on mental health

The project rests on the Os-Lof material, largely collected by financial support from the Norwegian Research Council. This material comprises data about nearly 2 500 individuals altogether, out of which more than 1 000 have been personally interviewed in 1990 and 2001. A long list of established instruments were used during the interview, including The Composite International Diagnostic Interview, Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25, and AUDIT. The persons were randomly drawn from adult populations in Oslo and L ofoten. 79% of persons interviewed in 1990 were reinterviewed in 2001. Extensive data of episodes of illness, social situation, and use of health services at two points in time make it possible to disentangle age and cohort effects, as well as to model po ssible causal relationships, and describe time trends. The lead researcher Inger Sandanger has made this data set come real. She now works in HØKH, a health services research centre in Akershus University Hospital. The centre is newly established and co mprises 8 people, three of them employed by the University of Oslo. Their CVs cover medicine, epidemiology, statistics, informatics, social and political sciences and economy. This proposal paves the ground for inclusion of additional expertise in this new unit. The Os-Lof material provides difficult methodological challenges, and we need to build a group that works closely together. Sandanger has recruited three excellent young researchers that will fit well into the group.