Maarit Leinonen
Photo Vessi Visuals
Year of birth: 1982
Official title: Chief Physician
Tel. +358 29 524 7640
E-mail: [email protected]
Expertise
- Determinants of health, health disparities ja strategies for reducing health disparities
- Pharmacovigilance
- Using nationwide registries in public health decision-making
- Data quality
- Reproductive health, perinatal health
- Cancer screening
Primary duties
- Chief Physician
- Principal Investigator of Drugs and Pregnancy project where aim is to promote rationale use of medicines and pharmacovigilance during pregnancy
- Principal Investigator in other projects which use national register data with an aim to promote cost-effectiveness of health care services
- Senior researcher in epidemiology and biostatistics who supervises data scientists, doctoral researchers, postdoctoral researchers, and physicians specialising in Public Health Medicine
Education
- 2022, Specialist in Public Health Medicine, University of Helsinki
- 2020, Title of Docent (Epidemiology), University of Helsinki
- 2013, PhD, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki
- 2007, Licentiate in Medicine (MD), University of Helsinki
Professional background
- 2022–, Chief Physician, THL
- 2022–, Clinical lecturer (20 %), University of Helsinki
- 2020–2022, Research Manager, THL
- 2018–2020, Project Manager, THL
- 2017, Chief Development Officer (20 %), HUS, Helsinki Biobank
- 2015–2018, Postdoctoral Researcher, Cancer Registry of Norway, Norway
- 2013–2015, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Information Officer, Finnish Cancer Registry
Language skills
- Finnish (native)
- English (excellent)
- Swedish (good)
- Norwegian (good)
Current projects
- 2019 -, IMI ConcePTION
- 2018 -, Drugs and pregnancy
- 2018 -, SCAN-AED: Nordic register-based study of antiepileptic drugs in pregnancy
Professional memberships
- 2022 -, Executive Committee Nordic PharmacoEpidemiological Network
- 2020 -, Sub-committee for information management in pharmacotherapy related to reform of pharmaceutical matters
- 2021–2022, Expert group developing delivery of information on pharmaceutical products
- 2020–2022, Steering Group of Data quality framework subproject
Affiliations
None
Publications and research
Dissertation/Licentiate thesis
Leinonen Maarit (2013). Prevalence of HPV infection and use of HPV test in cervical cancer screening: Randomized evaluation within the organised cervical cancer screening programme in Finland. University of Helsinki.
Scientific research articles
Five selected recent publications.
Huybrechts Krista ym. (2023) Association of In Utero Antipsychotic Medication Exposure With Risk of Congenital Malformations in Nordic Countries and the US. JAMA Psychiatry 80(2), 156-166.
Vegrim Håkon ym. (2022) Cancer risk in children of mothers with epilepsy and high-dose folic acid use during pregnancy. JAMA Neurol 79(11), 1-10.
Bjørk Marte ym. (2022) Association of Prenatal Exposure to Antiseizure Medication with Risk of Autism and Intellectual Disability JAMA Neurol 79(7), 672-681.
Hjorth Sarah ym. (2022) Prenatal exposure to nitrofurantoin and risk of childhood leukaemia - a registry-based cohort study in four Nordic countries. Int J Epidemiol 51(3), 778-788.
Halfdanarson Oskar ym. (2022) Antipsychotic use in pregnancy and risk of attention/deficit-hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder: A Nordic cohort study and sibling analysis. Evid Based Ment Health 25(2), 54-62.
Full list of publications indexed in PubMed.
Project reports
Leinonen, Maarit ym. (2022) Raskausajan lääkkeiden käyttö ja syntyneiden lasten terveys 1996–2019 [Drug utilization during pregnancy and children's health 1996–2019]. Report 13/2022. Helsinki: Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL).
Leinonen, Maarit ym. (2020) Raskausajan lääkkeiden käyttö ja syntyneiden lasten terveys 1996–2016 [Maternal medication use during pregnancy and children's health 1996–2016]. Report 16/2020. Helsinki: Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL).
Honours
My thesis was awarded the best PhD thesis of the year 2013 by the Finnish Medical Journal.
