About Social impact Center (SHIC)

SHIC's purpose and goal

SHIC contributes to a system shift from a reactive to a preventive focus of governance and interventions within public health, health and social services. Established in 2018, SHIC aims to be a national knowledge centre that gathers expertise and capacity to support primarily the public sector and civil society. Through work at both national and local levels, with strategic and operative initiatives, we build capacity for long-term welfare investments.

Social Challenge

Society invests significant resources in acute and reactive measures within the welfare sector. The body of knowledge regarding the value of preventive and early interventions continues to grow, and there is consensus that prevention should be prioritized for both human and economic reasons. However, it is challenging to shift focus in systems primarily designed to address immediate needs, where the value of prevention is often distributed among various stakeholders. For instance, according to SCB (Statistics Sweden), only 3% of total healthcare expenditures in 2016 were allocated to prevention. Resource constraints, lack of incentives, and knowledge gaps  methods, innovations, and approaches from being implemented at a sufficient scale to impact both systems and individuals.

Our Solutions

SHIC is an independent knowledge platform that brings capacity and expertise to drive welfare development through both strategic and operational initiatives and solutions. While there is ample specialist competence in society, there is a lack of actors who can take a cross-sectoral and implementation-oriented perspective. Experience from other countries also highlights the importance of actors with a national mandate and a clear focus on implementation of the best available evidence. 

Strengthening the connection between available knowledge and adaptation to local conditions is essential. SHIC acts as a support function, assisting municipalities, regions, and other stakeholders in designing solutions that yield measurable improvements for relevant target groups while being sustainable in the long term.

We support our partners by:

• analyzing and visualising risk and protective factors for children and youth, 
• reviewing available evidence using the 'rapid review' format, 
• defining relevant social, health and economic outcomes, 
• designing theory of change and helping operationalising this to the local context,
• monitoring and evaluation
• designing social outcomes contracts and outcomes focused procurement models
• developing cross-sectoral governance models

Our Impact

RISE, through SHIC, is a crucial part of the Swedish ecosystem for social innovation and welfare development. At the European level, SHIC is a recognized actor providing technical support and practical cases for the EU’s social, health and economy of wellbeing agenda. In collaboration with municipalities, regions, and governmental entities, knowledge and best practice regarding effective interventions, definition and measurement of social outcomes, and outcome-focused models related to contracting and procurement is generated. 

Dissemination of the knowledge and exchange with academia and other stakeholders both in Sweden and internationally further drives positive change towards a socially sustainable society.