We are interested in the entire human life span, from prenatal and early life events to ageing, and aim at providing accurate scientific information on the developmental aspects of human growth – be it emotional, interpersonal, cognitive or physical growth. Currently, the main focus of our work is on how prenatal and early life events influence later psychological and physical well-being. We collaborate intensively with other academic research groups around the world, as well as Finnish hospitals and institutions. We are currently involved in several research projects.
ITU is a research project on fetal programming and risk factors in early pregnancy, and their association with child outcomes. We are currently recruiting pregnant mothers and their families to participate.
Predo is a multicenter study on preeclampsia, prenatal stress, and fetal programming of child’s psychological development. We are currently following up on the school-age participants.
The EU Horizon 2020 funded RECAP Preterm project is a collaboration of 13 countries and over 20 institutions aimed at building an innovative, collaborative research platform, hosting data from multiple cohort studies and nordic country registers. The data will then be analyzed to predict universal protective factors and successful treatment interventions for preterm and very low birth weight populations.
This Norface project will investigate what factors provide protection and increase resilience for preterm children’s life course outcomes. It will consider protective/resiliency factors at the individual (such as specific educational skills), micro-system (including parental socio-economic status, quality of parenting, and peer relations) and macro-system level (including differences regarding the countries’ educational systems, welfare systems, and income inequality). By studying transitions at all stages of the life cycle up to old age, the project is crosscutting the themes of the call. The collaborative study brings together four research groups based in the UK, Finland, and Germany across the disciplines of Psychology, Economics, and Public Health covering complementary strengths. The results will inform the future design of interventions to promote the health, prosperity, and wellbeing of those born preterm at all stages of their lifecycle.
HBCS is a large collaborative study, which focuses on the long term health influences of early growth and living conditions. Our group is involved in assessing early life psychological risk factors and aging in a cohort of over 2000 men and women born in Helsinki in 1934-1944.
The Helsinki Study of Very Low Birthweight Adults (HeSVA), otherwise known as Pikku-K, is a longitudinal study on infants born with very low birth weight (<1500g), and followed into adulthood. The study is conducted in collaboration with Helsinki University Hospital and the National institute for Health and Welfare.
Our group is also involved in several other projects, including the Arvo Ylppö Longitudinal Study (AYLS), PPP-Botnia and VIDI.