The department is organised into four research groups:
Child and adolescent health
The research group deals with research into child and adolescent health and wellbeing, mostly with projects that link conceptual and theoretical development with qualitative and quantitative empirical evidence. We carry out research into infants, school children and young people in youth education programmes. We often focus on epidemiology and method development, but also use qualitative methods and implement intervention projects.
The research group is led by Katrine Rich Madsen.
Mental health
Good mental health is a prerequisite for well-being and everyday functioning. In the research group for Mental Health and Illness, we work on exploring what mental health is, the links between illness and mental health as well as on exploring how it relates to the mental health of various groups in society and what can be done to improve it. To this end, we use a number of health care methods, including qualitative and quantitative methods, concept analysis, theory development and intervention research.
The research group is led by Sigurd Mørk Rønbøl Lauridsen.
Health promotion and interventions
The research group deals with health promotion and intervention research in various settings and among different target groups, with special focus on increasing wellbeing and improving the health of young people, the unemployed and patients. We work in an interdisciplinary way and combine qualitative and quantitative research methods to develop and evaluate interventions and the services we offer.
The research group is led by Susan Andersen.
Social health
We carry out research into social conditions at a relational and structural level that affect human health and wellbeing in different empirical contexts. We deal with research fields such as health policies, social inequality, marginalised and vulnerable groups, the relationship between professionals and citizens/patients, and violence within and outside of close relationships. Our research is often exploratory, so ethnographic and qualitative methods are our primary approach, but we also combine these with, for example, questionnaire surveys. We carry out critical research and focus on developing new analytical and theoretical perspectives in our research fields.
The research group is led by Tine Tjørnhøj-Thomsen.