Stine Kjær Urhøj

Stine Kjær Urhøj

Assistant Professor

I'm affiliated with the Perinatal, Obstetric, and Pediatric Epidemiology (POPE) research group at Section of Epidemiology, Copenhagen University.

My primary research focus is perinatal and pediatric epidemiology and epidemiological methods and I'm particularly interested in how conditions during pregnancy and early life influence the health of the child.

I'm currently working on four main projects:

1. The SCOPE (Scandinavian studies of Covid-19 in pregnancy) projects I+II

The SCOPE project, funded by Nordforsk, studies the impact of COVID-19 on pregnant women and their newborns in three key areas:

  • Assessing the likelihood of COVID-19 infection among pregnant women compared to non-pregnant women of reproductive age, including assessing the risk of severe disease and hospitalizations.
  • Investigating the potential risks of COVID-19 during pregnancy, including pregnancy complications and fetal loss.
  • Examining the effects of maternal COVID-19 on the health of the child, both short-term and long-term.

2. Project on social inequalities in child health

This research focuses on understanding the drivers of health inequalities in childhood and their long-term impact. The project addresses important health conditions during early life, childhood, and young adulthood, with an initial focus on child mortality and mental health disorders. The goal is to quantify the potential impact of policies on reducing inequalities in child health and identify the best approaches and timing for interventions. The research is part of a larger international project led by David Taylor-Robinson at the Liverpool University aiming to inform international policy decisions.

3. The PREGDK project at Statistics Denmark

As the project leader for the PREGDK project, I am responsible for overseeing the construction of a comprehensive dataset encompassing all pregnancies in Denmark from 1980 onwards, utilizing national registers as the primary data source. This involves implementing a series of expert-provided and data-driven rules to accurately assign data points to specific pregnancies. Additionally, a vital aspect of the project entails assessing the validity of the data and conducting comparative analyses with other birth- and pregnancy datasets.

4. The EUROlinkCAT project (at Kolding Hospital) 

The EUROlinkCAT is funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programmean. EUROlinkCAT will use the EUROCAT infrastructure (population-based registries for surveillance of congenital anomalies, CAs) to support 21 EUROCAT registries in 13 European countries to link their CA data to mortality, hospital discharge, prescription and educational databases. One big aim of the EUROlinkCAT is to investigate the health and educational outcomes of children with congenital anomalies for the first 10 years of their lives. In total, an estimated 200,000 children born between 1995-2014 is included. I am responsible to establishing the Danish database with the linked data and to set up and analyse data from all participating registries in some of the specific work packages. You can read more about the EUROlinkCAT here: www.eurolinkcat.eu/home

 

Other key responsibilities:

I'm chairing the Department of Public Health's large data infrastructure, known as the Public Health Database, which is utilized by over 180 researchers. This responsibility includes overseeing a secretariat consisting of 4-5 individuals.

 

Teaching

Teaching

  • Course in Perinatal and Early Life Epidemiology at the MSc programme in Public Health (and PhD)
  • Course in Introduction to Epidemiology at the BSc programme in Public Health Science, University of Copenhagen
  • Course in Methodology (Epidemiology) at the MSc programme in Medicine, University of Copenhagen
  • Course in Social Epidemiology and Public Health at the BSc programme in Public Health Science, University of Copenhagen

 Supervision

  • Master's theses in the MSc degree programme in Public Health Science and MSc degree programme in Medicine (UCPH)
  • Bachelor's theses in the BSc degree programme in Public Health Science and BSc degree programme in Medicine (UCPH) 
  • 1st year’s Project in Social Epidemiology and Public Health, Disease prevention and Health Promotion, and Sociology at the BSc programme in Public Health Science (UCPH)
  • Internships in the MSc and BSc degree programme in Public Health Science (UCPH)

ID: 45243348