I am a professor at the Department of Nursing Science. The professorship has a focus on Health promotion, and it is funded by Stiftelsen Eschnerska Frilasarettet.

I have worked in several multidisciplinary research groups; and I have twice joined the faculty of Department of Family Health Care Nursing at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) for my post-graduate and post-doctoral research. In the academic year 2008-2009, I was awarded a Postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Social Research (IASR), Tampere University. I am also experienced in academic teaching, i.e. in competence-based curriculum development, supervision and teaching in PhD, MSc, BSc programmes.

I'm leading the research sub programme Health Promotion and we are interested in improving the health and well-being of individuals, families, populations, communities and society and supporting them to make healthier and sustainable choices. Our research focuses on health and health choices, their determinants, and health literacy and health promotion activities in local settings such as families, schools, social and health services and social media.  Our current multidisciplinary research project TUBEDU (2022-2026) funded by the Research Council of Finland focuses on social media and adolescent mental health (https://sites.utu.fi/tubedu/en/). Our new area of interest is planetary health.

I have conducted as principal investigator mixed-methods research, intervention studies and various literature reviews. I have expertice in using secondary data, mostly from large-scale and population-based data settings.

Research methodology, Supervising thesis, Participatory methods in learning