Karin Modig

About me

I finished my PhD at the Department of Public Health, Karolinska Institutet in Sep 2010. I did my postdoc at IMM and is currently a research group leader and an Associate Professor at the division of Epidemiology at IMM. My research group, Ageing and Health, concerns the ageing population, the driving force of longevity and old age health, and the consequences of it. I have worked for many years with the national population registers in Sweden and have an interest in the validity of these. I am a member of the steering group for SINGS (The Swedish INterdisciplinary Graduate School in Register-Based Research) and lecture about epidemiological methods and register based research both at graduate and post graduate level.

Research description

The ageing population - An epidemiologic approach to a fundamental public health issue.

The share of old people is expanding rapidly in most human populations. The phenomenon of population ageing is unprecedented in human history and brings with it many challenges. It has significant implications for health care, living arrangements and pension systems, and raises research issues such as: How long can we expect to live? To what extent have we managed to prolong healthy life years? And how will living arrangements and long-term care of elderly people be shaped in the future?

The anticipated outcome of this project will be knowledge about the ageing process of humans.  With the ageing process I mean the pace with which mortality increases with age, the pattern with which health starts to deteriorate and the selection of which individuals reach very old age, and what shape these trajectories.

We combine epidemiological and demographic methods to explore these research questions.

 

Members of the research group:

Anna Meyer - postdoc

Stina Ek - postdoc

Mozhu Ding - postdoc

Alexandra Wenneberg - guest researcher/postdoc

Shunsuke Murata - guest researcher/postdoc

Anders Ahlbom - professor emeritus

Affiliated to the group:

Marcus Ebeling, researcher at Max Planck Institute for Demography

Katharina Schmidt-Mende, MD and researcher at Region Stockholm and Karolinska Institutet

Hanna Bring, MD and PhD-student at Region Stockholm and NVS Karolinska Institutet

Margareta Hedström, MD and Adjunked professor Karolinska Hospital and CLINTEC Karolinska Institutet

Katarina Greve, MD and PhD-student at Karolinska Hospital and CLINTEC Karolinska Institutet

Glenn Sandström, Associate Professor Umeå University

Terese Sara Høj Jørgensen, postdoc Copenhagen University

Sven Drefahl, Associate Professor, Stockholm University

Financing (past and current):

The Swedish Research Council

FORTE

Familjen Kamprads Stiftelse

Riksbankens Jubileumsfond

SFO Vård Karolinska Institutet

Åke Wibergs Stiftelse

Riksbankens Jubileumsfond

KI fonder

 

Collaborators:

Stockholm Demography Unit, Stockholm University

Max Planck Institute of Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Edinburgh University

Aging Research Center (ARC) Stockholm University

Umeå University  

Teaching portfolio

Teaching and course directing represents around 30% of my time

I am the course director of the 7.5 credit course Epidemiological methods for studying determinants of disease at the master program of public health epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet

I am the course director of PhD courses Analysis of bias in register-based research and Longitudinal research methods: panel, growth curve, and sequence analysis

I am board member and assistant coordinator for SINGS research school. SINGS stand for Swedish INterdisciplinary Graduate School in Register-Based Research and is a graduate school for doctoral students, read more here. 2014-ongoing.

I have more than 700 hours of teaching in Epidemiology and related topics

I am board member in the Doctoral Education Group at IMM, KI, 2019-ongoing.

Education

MSc, Stockholm University 2002 (Economics)

PhD, Karolinska Institutet Sep 2010 (Epidemiology)

Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Docent), Karolinska Institutet  Feb 2015

Academic honours, awards and prizes

Appointed guest researcher at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Reaserch, Rostock, Germany between 2016-2019. Research Group on Mathematical and Actuarial Demography headed by Professor Roland Rau. 

Nominated by KI as a candidate for Pro Futura. Selecetd by the international evaluation committee to the second round and received a  research grant from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond of 1 million Swedish kronor.