Mission

A brief history and a note on the future

In 2019, a group of researchers from Department of Public Health Sciences at Stockholm University (Ylva B Almquist, Lauren Bishop, Josephine Jackisch, and Bitte Modin; featured in the picture) attended the annual conference of Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies.

Inspired by similar initiatives in the UK, we discussed the need for establishing a network of researchers working on cohort data from the Nordic countries.

We decided to call this network The Nordic Interdisciplinary Cohort Network (ICON).

The idea had to be put on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Once we were able to return to the office, the planning was reassumed.

ICON was finally launched on January 1, 2023. At this initial stage, it was limited to researchers working at the Department of Public Health Sciences and covered a handful of active research projects focusing on cohort studies.

After the establishment of this website in late 2023, we will gradually seek to expand the network across the Nordic countries.

Our ambitions

The three primary goals of ICON are to:

  1. Facilitate the use of cohort data
    Cohort data are only as useful as we make them. Within ICON, we aim to facilitate access to data to the extent possible under current national regulations. To set an example, we offer an overview of the data that ICON members are working on. Those who are interested are more than welcome to contact us to further scope the opportunities for obtaining access.
  2. Share information
    On this website, we will frequently publish updates related to publications, projects, events, and other types of information that might be of interest to researchers working with cohort studies.
  3. Strengthen collaborative research
    The register data available in the Nordic countries constitute a gold mine for longitudinal and life course researchers and present ample opportunities for cross-country comparisons. We hope that ICON can provide a platform for such collaboration.