CERH
CERH comprises a multidisciplinary group of researchers with expertise in epidemiology and biostatistics, clinical medicine, biology, genetics, environmental sciences, ecology, geography and anthropology. CERH provides basic training related to public health, epidemiology and environmental health for medical students and systematic training for doctoral students.
Starting from June 2022 CERH is a part of the Research Unit of Population Health at the Faculty of Medicine.
Research group information
Unit and faculty
Contact information
Contact person
Research group description
Professors
- Jouni Jaakkola
- Simo Näyhä (Professor Emeritus)
Adjunct Professors (Docents)
- Timo Hugg
- Aino-Kaisa Rantala
- Tiina Ikäheimo (30% contract, also professor at the University of Tromsø, Norway)
- Taina Lajunen (30% contract)
- Yuming Guo
Visiting researchers
Postdoctoral Researchers
Doctoral Researchers
- Salla Alavaikko
- Ilkka Mehtonen
- Simo-Pekka Kiihamäki
- Heli Kukkurainen
- Abraham Openy
Project Researcher
- Meseret Fetene
Secretary
- Riitta Aittamaa
Saami Climate Council secretariat
- Mari Kuoppamaa (coordinator)
- Ulla Vesteri (secretary)
Research Assistants
Staff email addresses firstname.lastname @ oulu.fi.
The overall aim of CERH research is to assess the health impact and burden of disease from environmental exposures directly or indirectly related to global environmental change. Specific research themes include studies on the effects of air pollution, temperature and housing factors on respiratory infections and chronic diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and reproductive health, including application of genetic methods to address gene-environment interaction in asthma to investigate mechanisms conveying susceptibility. One important theme is to study the effects of extreme temperatures in combination with indoor and other outdoor exposures on symptoms, morbidity and mortality from the most common chronic diseases.
The ground-breaking approach of CERH is to apply multidisciplinary complementary research methodologies by conducting broad nationwide registry-linkage studies, follow-ups of large population-based epidemiologic studies, controlled experimental studies, and by synthesizing the evidence applying meta-analyses and burden of disease assessment. The obtained results of empirical research are applied to future scenarios that can be extrapolated to different parts of Europe and to other parts of the world.
The produced research results enable to develop evidence-based mitigation and prevention measures, thus supporting health policy planning as well as developing health care systems to manage the arising health problems.
CERH is responsible of teaching public health discipline at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oulu. CERH provides basic training related to public health, epidemiology and environmental health for medical students and systematic training for doctoral students.
If you are interested in doing your advanced studies at CERH, please contact the researchers.
Follow us in Facebook
Center for Environmental and Respiratory Health Research (CERH) Research Unit of Population Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oulu
- Mailing address: CERH, P. O. Box 5000, FI-90014 University of Oulu, FINLAND
- Visiting address: Kontinkangas Campus, Faculty of Medicine Main Building, Aapistie 5 B, 1st floor, Oulu, FINLAND
- Internal address: 5CERH
- Email: cerh (a) oulu.fi; Staff email addresses: firstname.lastname (a) oulu.fi
- Jaakkola JJK. Planetaarinen terveys ja tulevaisuuden kansantaudit. In: Miten Suomi voi nyt ja tulevaisuudessa? Näkökulmia hyvin- ja pahoinvoinnin sekä kansantautien kehitykseen. Eduskunnan tulevaisuusvaliokunnan julkaisuja 6/2022. Helsinki: Grano; 2023. Available from: https://www.eduskunta.fi/FI/naineduskuntatoimii/julkaisut/Documents/TUV…
- Kivimaa P, Heikkinen M, Huttunen S, Jaakkola JJK, Juhola S, Juntunen S, Kaljonen M, Käyhkö J, Leino M, Loivaranta T, Lundberg P, Lähteenmäki-Uutela A, Näkkäläjärvi K, Sivonen MH, Vainio A. Ilmastopolitiikan oikeudenmukaisuuden arviointi. Suomen ilmastopaneelin raportti 1/2023. Suomen Ilmastopaneeli; 2023. Available from: https://www.ilmastopaneeli.fi/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Ilmastopaneeli…
- Furman E, Siivonen K, Linnanen L, Halme M, Jaakkola JJK, Mönkkönen M, Saari J, Salonen AO, Toivonen T, Tolvanen A, Soini K, Schönach P, Lyytimäki J. Six paths towards sustainability: a tookit to promote systemic transformation towards sustainability in Finland. Finnish expert panel on sustainable development, publications 1/2020. Helsinki: Natural Resources Insitute Finland, Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, Finnish Environment Insititute; 2020. Available from: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-326-921-7
- Näkkäläjärvi K, Juntunen S, Jaakkola JJK. SAAMI – Saamelaisten sopeutuminen ilmastonmuutokseen -hankkeen tieteellinen loppuraportti. Valtioneuvoston selvitys- ja tutkimustoiminnan julkaisusarja 2020:25. [in Finnish, includes abstract in North Saami, Inari Saami, Skolt Saami, Swedish and English] Available from: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-287-930-1
- Liu C, Chen R, Sera F, Vicedo-Cabrera A, Guo Y, Tong S, de Sousa Zanotti Stagliorio Coelho M, Hilario P Saldiva N, Lavigne E, Matus Correa P, Valdes Ortega N, Osorio Garcia S, Pascal M, Stafoggia M, Scortichini M, Hashizume M, Honda Y, Hurtado M, Cruz J, Nunes B, Teixeira JP, Kim H, Tobias A, Íñiguez C, Forsberg B, Åström C, Ragettli MS, Guo YLL, Chen BY, Bell ML, Wright CY, Scovronick N, Garland R, Milojevic A, Kyselý J, Urban A, Orru Aaron H, Indermitte E, Jaakkola JJK, Ryti NRI, Zanobetti A, Schwartz J, Cohen A, Gasparrini A, Kan H. Ambient particulate air pollution and daily mortality in 652 cities. N Engl J Med 2019; 381:705-715. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1817364.