130 years of the Croatian Institute of Public Health (1893–2023)

Abstract

The Croatian Institute of Public Health (CIPH) is the central public health institution in the Republic of Croatia, which coordinates the county public health institutes’ network. The Institute carries out activities from a variety of fields: epidemiology of communicable and chronic non-communicable diseases, public health, health promotion, environmental health, microbiology, school and adolescent medicine, mental health and addiction prevention, and occupational health as well as toxicology and anti-doping. The CIPH’s beginnings can be traced back to several institutions that were established in Zagreb at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. Those were the Royal Institute for the Production of Animal Vaccine against Smallpox and the Infectious Disease Hospital (both established in 1893), the Royal Institute of Bacteriology and Hygiene (est. 1907), the Pasteur Institute in Zagreb (est. 1918), and the Institute of Social Medicine (est. 1924). In 1926, all of the above-mentioned institutions were merged into a newly established public health entity: the Institute of Hygiene with the School of Public Health. The Institute was further reorganised in the subsequent years, which was followed by changes of its name: in 1942, the name was changed to the Institute of Health and, soon after World War II, it became part of the Ministry of People’s Health, as its Hygiene and Epidemiological Department. In 1946, it became the Institute of Hygiene in Zagreb; in 1951, it was renamed the Central Institute of Hygiene in Zagreb. In 1961, it was again renamed the Republican Institute of Health Protection, and in 1970, it became the Health Protection Institute of the Socialist Republic of Croatia. In 1991, after the Republic of Croatia gained independence, the Institute changed its name to the Health Protection Institute of the Republic of Croatia, and, as of 1994, it has borne its current name: Croatian Institute of Public Health. Considering that, during the CIPH’s rich history, the scope of its activities has not always been the same, this paper will try to give a brief overview of the Institute’s first 130 years.