Anna Pulakka
PhD
Public health, global health, physical activity, accelerometers, smoking
I am a global and public health expert with experience of objective physical activity measurements in both children and adults. My PhD study in the field of International Health at University of Tampere encompassed developing and validating accelerometer measurement methods for young children in low-resource settings in Malawi. I also used these methods to investigate the effects of nutrition intervention on physical activity.
I have worked as a senior researcher in the Finnish Retirement and Aging study (FIREA, www.utu.fi/firea) at University of Turku since 2015. I have been planning and supervising the accelerometer data collection and investigating different analysis methods for the accelerometer data. I have also published several articles related to accelerometer-measured physical activity and health behaviour changes in retirement transition.
Global health, physical activity measurements
- The effect of retirement on subjective and objective sleep characteristics: the Finnish Retirement and Aging study (2018)
- Journal of Sleep Research
(Other publication) - Distance From Home to the Nearest Tobacco Outlet May Not Reflect the True Accessibility—Reply (2017)
- JAMA Internal Medicine
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal) - Effect of 12-month intervention with lipid-based nutrient supplement on the physical activity of Malawian toddlers: a randomised, controlled trial (2017)
- British Journal of Nutrition
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Height gain after two-years-of-age is associated with better cognitive capacity, measured with Raven’s coloured matrices at 15-years-of-age in Malawi (2017)
- Maternal and Child Nutrition
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Predictors and pathways of language and motor development in four prospective cohorts of young children in Ghana, Malawi, and Burkina Faso (2017)
- Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Trajectories of risky drinking around the time of statutory retirement: a longitudinal latent class analysis (2017)
- Addiction
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Association Between Distance From Home to Tobacco Outlet and Smoking Cessation and Relapse (2016)
- JAMA Internal Medicine
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Change in Neighborhood Disadvantage and Change in Smoking Behaviors in Adults: A Longitudinal, Within-individual Study (2016)
- Epidemiology
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Changes in physical activity during transition to retirement : a cohort study (2016)
- International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Fyysisen aktiivisuuden ja fyysisen passiivisuuden yhteydet terveyteen ja hyvinvointiin lapsilla (2016) Tieteelliset perusteet varhaisvuosien fyysisen aktiivisuuden suosituksille Eero A. Haapala, Anna Pulakka, Henna L. Haapala, Timo A. Lakka
(D2 Article in a professional compilation book)



