Our Institute of Population Studies has solely been conducting the demographic and health survey on Turkey every five years, and has been providing provide up-to-date and reliable data on fertility levels and trends in fertility, maternal and child health, family planning and early childhood development. This is an important source of data for indicators on the SDGs. The latest of these surveys, namely the 2018 TDHS, for the first time calculated at the household level in Turkey the demographic and health indicators for Syrian refugees.

We transform the data that we collect from the society into services for the society. The Public Health Institute has carried out a research to identify the risk factors for certain non-communicable diseases in the Güdül province of Ankara. The results of the study were shared with the local community, meetings were held with political decision-makers, and a training centre was inaugurated in the province in order to provide trainings on the risk factors that were defined based on the outcomes of the project.

In another project, which also focused on societal health, the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics has evaluated malnutrition, overweight and obesity status, and physical activity profile in children and adolescents in a pilot area in Akyurt district of the city of Ankara.

Researchers of our Cancer Institute aim to provide new information on carcinogenesis, tumour biology and immunology so that these data might be used to develop new immunotherapeutic approaches against cancer. They are also working on the Cancer Risk Map of Turkey to evaluate the geographical distribution of major risk factors for cancer progression in Turkey; quantify the associations between certain risk factors and cancer progression; analyse the geographical distribution features and interactions of the risks and outcomes; and provide a national map of cancer risk distribution in Turkey.

Our University is a leading university which strongly emphasises its support for tobacco control studies within the university at the highest level. The approach of the University has been declared as “TOBACCO FREE” which is compatible with the global tobacco control agenda. We have contributed to the preparation of the “Step by Step to ‘TOBACCO-FREE UNIVERSITY’ Implementation Guideline” in 2019 to be used by universities in general, and we are working on making this implementation widespread.

Our researchers in the Department of Psychiatry, in collaboration with the members of Koç University, prepared a nationally representative survey titled “Mental Health Profile of Turkey-2”, which was conducted as part of the global consortium, The World Mental Health Surveys Initiative run by the WHO and coordinated by Harvard University. The main goal of this study was to provide a general evaluation of mental health and to guide policy-makers for better mental health care services.