My research is in the field of climate change and health. My main interest is climate adaptation, climate communication and policy development.
I am a professor in public health science with a focus on climate change and health. My main interests are climate adaptation, public health interventions, health communication and knowledge translation.
I lead projects in low-, middle- and high-income countries. A couple of examples of my externally funded projects are “Household Preferences on Lifestyles Transformation for Emission Reduction in Low Carbon Societies” (WP-leader) and “Dengue risk communication in a local Indonesian community – understanding knowledge, attitudes and practice to improve action” (PI). I was integrating editor for health in the Lancet Commission “Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health” published in 2015. I co-lead the working group on adaptation, planning and resilience for health in “The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change”. It is an international, multi-disciplinary research collaboration running until 2030 following on from the 2015 Lancet Commission (lancetcountdown.org).
Another research interest is tobacco control and prevention targeting young people, with more than 20 years of experience. In my PhD-thesis in Epidemiology and Public Health Sciences I studied how tobacco use can be prevented amongst young people. I was a member of an advisory board for the Swedish Government for drug and tobacco policy in 2008 - 2017. Together with researchers from Uppsala/Wayne State University I studied waterpipe use in Young people “An evidence-based intervention study to prevent water pipe use in school going adolescents". I am currently leading a research project with researchers at our unit and in collaboration with researchers at KI evaluating a method to prevent youth smoking funded by the Swedish Public Health Agency, with an RCT combined with an observation study and a health economic evaluation.
At the end of 2017, I was awarded a fellowship with an individual leadership program in global health by SIGHT (Swedish Institute for Global Health Transformation) under the auspices of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (sight.nu).
Read more about my research in the article "Rising temperatures heighten ill-health" (from the magazine Think, no. 1, 2019)