Forte

In the following, we will present our replies and views on the issues brought up in the evaluation form. When replying to these questions, an important starting point is that we have always viewed the Forte Centre grant as a crucial part of the basic funding for CHESS, and hence the Forte Centre is inseparable from CHESS, and vice versa. This view of the role of the Forte Centre is strongly rooted in the way that CHESS was initiated and funded as a national network centre for research on inequalities in health in 2000. This grant was in turn won in a national competition between the main universities in a way similar to the Forte (FAS) Centres launched in 2007, which means that CHESS (together with ARC) in effect was a Forte Centre before we received the centre grant for the Forte Centre “Human society as a life-long determinant of human health”. When the original dedicated funding for CHESS ended in 2005, a phase-out grant was negotiated with FAS for the years 2006-2009. The FAS/Forte Centre grant received in competition has therefore been a direct continuation of these earlier grants, and hence used as a part of CHESS core funding (along with the faculty grant from SU and KI). This was also strongly endorsed by the evaluators in 2009.