Director's summary

Mikaela von Bonsdorff was appointed as the new Director of the Public Health Research Program from September 2025 onwards. She has worked at Folkhälsan since 2015 and is also a Professor of Gerontology and Public Health at the University of Jyväskylä. Following the recommendations of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) in 2024, planning for a new organizational structure for the program, reflecting the research themes within the groups, was initiated.

The research group Myofin was founded in January 2025, when the three former muscle research groups at the Folkhälsan Research Center were merged. Academy Research Fellow Marco Savarese was appointed leader of Myofin. The group conducts a wide range of studies on rare muscle diseases, from basic research to genetic and clinical investigations.

Elina Engberg and Jenni Laitila were appointed Young Group Leaders in the autumn 2025, following awarding funding as Academy Research Fellows by the Research Council of Finland. Elina Engberg works in the Sunrise Finland study, which investigates physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep among children aged 3–4. Jenni Laitila’s team in the Myofin research group studies the pathogenetic mechanisms that lead to muscle diseases and has established new methods, such as the single-muscle-fiber approach.

The Board of the Research Center continued its strategic development work. Following the recommendations of the SAB, the Board decided on a process for how senior Group Leaders can step down to give the next generation of researchers an opportunity. The different research career opportunities at the Center were clarified. The recruitment of a new Director for the Genetics Research Program was planned, and discussion about the future leadership structure of the Center was initiated.

In September, we organized a mentoring evening for medical students in collaboration with Thorax, the association for medical students at the University of Helsinki and our strategic stakeholder. Just over 50 students attended the dinner. Tiinamaija Tuomi gave a presentation titled The many faces of diabetes: Can better diagnostics guide treatment? Erik Somersalo and Patrik Smidtslund talked about their career paths and shared their experiences of combining clinical work with research. The event was well received by the participants. 
 
At the beginning of 2025, we launched our new dedicated web subdomain, research.folkhalsan.fi, giving our research a clearer and more visible home online. This makes it easier for us to present our research to an international academic audience, share key findings, and highlight ongoing projects in a way that is more accessible and discoverable.

Publications

Research at the Center continued to be active and productive. During the year, the research groups published 200 articles. Of these, 118 were peer-reviewed original articles in which Folkhälsan played a central role.

The distribution of the published articles in the three JuFo-classes demonstrates the high quality of our scientific production, classified by the Finnish Publication Forum JuFo.

Some highlights of our publications in 2025 – reflecting the diversity of our research – are summarized in this annual report.

Seven doctoral students from the Genetics Research Program and three from the Public Health Research Program defended their doctoral theses. Fifteen master's theses were also completed at the Research Center during the year. 

Funding

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Personnel

The research center employed 165 persons in 2025 (including 33 hourly employees as support staff), with a total of around 139 FTEs (Full-Time
Equivalent). In addition, several doctoral students and other researchers were
entirely externally funded, e.g. by University of Helsinki or private
foundations.

Appointments

Four researchers at the Center were awarded a Title of Docent at the University of Helsinki: 

Heidi Arponen in Orthodontics, 
Tarja Joensuu in Molecular Genetics, 
Samu Kurki in Bioinformatics, 
Salla-Maarit Volanen in Public Health.