Adjunct professor Helena Lapinleimu MD, PhD graduated
from the Medical School at the University of Tampere in 1987. She specialized
at the University of Turku in Pediatrics in 1997 and in Neonatology
in 2000. She defended her thesis in 1997 from the STRIP Study on Influence of
individualized dietary counselling and apolipoprotein E polymorphism on serum
lipoproteins in infancy. After her own thesis, she has collaborated with the
STRIP study by supervising two theses, with the neurological follow-up
study, NAMU by supervising one thesis and the long-term follow-up study of
preterm infants, the PIPARI study, by supervising two theses. Since 2004
she has had a position as the adjunct professor of Neonatology at the
University of Turku. Since 2007 she has led an active research group, FinAdo
(Finnish Adoption) Study, in Turku, Finland. 

Since 2001, she has been a member of the Ethics review
Committee of the Hospital Distirct of Southwest Finland. She has been a medical
adviser for four organizations of international Adoptions in Finland.

Research: She has published 120 original scientific publications
and 15 reviews, chapters in text books or other publications. She has
concentrated in her research work on two strategies: 1) To develop clinical
practices with scientific studies at Follow-up clinic of preterm infants in the
University Hospital of Turku 2) Scientific
research of internationally adopted children and other risk groups of
children with compromised development. Many internationally adopted
children have been maltreated and have lived with inadequate care in orphanages
and are often stressed when they arrive to families. Most of them manage later
fine, but some of them have overwhelming problems. The
FinAdo study of international adoptees comprises of three different parts: the
questionnaire study with 2000 participated children aimed to find out what kind
of physical or mental health problems adoptees in Finland have. This study will
be repeated in year 2019. Next, a longitudinal follow-up study with 150
internationally adopted children aims to find markers of physical stress that
would identify the children, with neurocognitive development problems at the
school age and later. The third FinAdo-study is a register study including internationally
and domestically adopted children with their parents and a comparison group of
main population.

Helena Lapinleimu has worked as a half-time teacher of pediatrics and neonatology at the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Mecicine, University of Turku since