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Kaare Christensen

Chair of Health Sciences
Department of Public Health

Email: kchristensen@health.sdu.dk
Webpage: https://www.sdu.dk/staff/kchristensen

Professor Kaare Christensen, MD, PhD, DMSc, is the Head of Research at the unit for Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Biodemography (EBB) at the Department of Public Health at SDU.

Professor Kaare Christensen is a medical doctor (1987). He has a PhD degree (1994) from Odense University and a Doctor of Medical Sciences degree (1999) from the University of Southern Denmark. He has, for more than a decade, been Director of both the Danish Twin Registry and The Danish Aging Research Center and has acted as co-PI for the US NIH-funded research program Long Life Family Study.

Dr. Christensen’s research is based mainly on large-scale ageing studies with a focus on twins and the oldest, taking advantage of the unique data resources in Denmark to shed light on the mechanisms of development and ageing. He has a longstanding interest in gender differences in health and survival as well as in the relation between early life events and later life health outcomes. Dr. Christensen is engaged in interdisciplinary ageing research combining methods from epidemiology, genetics, medicine, and demography. He has authored or co-authored more than 550 articles in peer-reviewed, international journals.

Dr. Christensen is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and he has been awarded the title of Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog. He has received several national and international honours and awards for his research: e.g., the University of Southern Denmark's first Outreach Award for widespread and creative communication of science; the Ethical Merit Award granted by the Danish National Committee on Biomedical Research Ethics (on behalf of the Danish Twin Registry); the Sohlberg Nordic Prize in Gerontology, and the Fondation IPSEN Longevity prize.

He has served on panels and study sections for national and European agencies and the US National Academies and the US National Institutes of Health, and he has been a reviewer of grant applications for Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, UK, Asian and US funding agencies.

For more information about Professor Kaare Christensen, please refer to the SDU Research Portal.

Kaare Christensen