Curt Hagquist

About Curt Hagquist

Curt Hagquist is a Guest Professor of Public Health at the Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg. In between 2009 and September 2020, he was the director of the Centre for Research on Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CFBUPH) at Karlstad University.

Curt Hagquist is a trained social worker and gained his PhD 1997 in Social work at the University of Gothenburg with the thesis “The Living Conditions of Young People in Sweden. On the crisis of the 1990s, social conditions and health”. In 1998-1999, he was a Visiting Scholar at Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Perth, Australia. In 2001, he returned to Perth as a Visiting Scholar at Murdoch University and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. In between 2001 and 2004, Curt Hagquist worked as project manager at the National Board of Health and Welfare, Centre for Epidemiology. From 2006 to 2013, he was employed part-time at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, managing a project on child and adolescent mental health.

International activities

Keynote speech at the Summit on actions required to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and service delivery systems in the WHO European Region. Athens, Hellenic Republic, 22–23 July 2021. “The mental health impacts of COVID-19 and the needs for actions focusing young people”.

International appointments

Member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on the mental health impacts of COVID-19 in the WHO European Region. 10 February 2021 – 9 February 2023.

Member of the Expert Review Panel for the Research Programmes in Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind, UK Medical Research Council (MRC), Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Sept 2020 – April 2021.

Research

Curt Hagquist’s areas of research expertise include Rasch Measurement Theory, and child and adolescent mental health. He was the Principal Investigator of the research program The impacts of changed living conditions on child and adolescent mental health (2013-2019), which was funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Forte). He was also the initiator of the study Young in Värmland, which was run 1988-2011. Currently, Curt Hagquist is participating in the project School, learning and mental health: determinants, consequences and prevention of school failure. He is a member of the Coordinating Committee and chair of the methodology development group of the international study on Health Behaviours in School-aged Children (HBSC), which includes 50 countries. He is also a member of the Swedish national team for the HBSC study.

Teaching

Curt Hagquist teaches courses in Rasch Measurement Theory. He has been principal supervisor for seven students who have completed their PhD.