The National FINRISK Study
FINRISK is a large Finnish population survey on risk factors on chronic, noncommunicable diseases.The Department of Public Health Solutions coordinates the data analyses, reporting and access to data and samples.
The survey was carried out for 40 years since 1972 every five years using independent, random and representative population samples from different parts of Finland. In 2012, 6424 persons participated.
The FINRISK Study is also known as the North Karelia Project and it was part of the World Health Organization MONICA Project (FINMONICA) in 1982-1992. The over 40 years of research from 1972 is called the National FINRISK Study.
Data from the FINRISK surveys are used for many different research projects and for national health monitoring needs. Recent research activities deal, in addition to cardiovascular diseases and the classical risk factors, also with e.g. asthma and allergy, alcohol, socioeconomic factors and genetic epidemiology.
The FINRISK 1992–2012 collections were transferred to THL Biobank in June 2015.
The National FINRISK Study and Health 2000 Survey were joined to form a new population study, the National FinHealth Study. The first survey was conducted in Spring 2017 in 50 areas.
More information
Email: finriski (at) thl.fi
Journal G3 published Sini Kerminen et al. article on Fine-Scale Genetic Structure in Finland.
Dialectal regions are explained in detail here.
May 2017
In honour of Finland's 100 years, Academy researcher Matti Pirinen from the University of Helsinki together with the postal services published a celebratory stamp using the National FINRISK Study data.
Postal services:
"Finland's coat of arms 1917 is a ten-euro special stamp designed by Pekka Piippo.
The only visible printing on the embossed stamp is its golden foil. In UV light, the map of Finland and a graph depicting the genetic background of Finns appear on the miniature sheet and the stamp. The graph is based on research carried out by Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland, which is part of the University of Helsinki, and the National Institute for Health and Welfare."