Salla Atkins – primary investigator; project lead
Salla Atkins is a social scientist and professor in the Global Health and Development group at the Faculty of Social Sciences. She is also affiliated to the department of Public Health Sciences at Karolinska Institutet. For the past 16 years Salla has researched issues related to the social determinants of health, poverty, inequity, and health systems in low, middle, and high-income countries. She has an interest in mixed-methods, register research, multisectoral interventions to improve health, and the evidence-to-policy connection through evidence reviews and policy dialogue. Salla has coordinated large EU projects during her postdoctoral work and currently has projects in Finland in addition to collaborations with partners in Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, India, and South Africa on various projects related to health equity.
Contact: salla.atkins@tuni.fi
Manela Karunadasa
Manela Karunadasa is a doctoral researcher at Tampere University. Her current line of research focuses on incentives in healthcare markets and provider moral hazard. Manela has a background in international development, and for many years she has worked with development partners such as the World Bank in public sector reforms related to governance, public finances and investments.
Contact: manela.karunadasa@tuni.fi
Hasan Sohail
Hasan Sohail is a Postdoctoral research fellow at Tampere University. He is an Epidemiologist
with PhD in Epidemiology, MS in Public Health, and bachelor’s in pharmacy. His areas of
expertise include working on register-based studies, multicounty data analyses, timeseries
methodologies, survey studies, ecological studies, longitudinal studies, quasi-experimental,
and cross-sectional study designs. Hasan has also worked in international collaborative
project with Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Germany and Finnish Institute for Health
and Welfare. He also has an extensive experience of working voluntarily with several NGOs.
His other research interests include health disparities in migrant populations, social
determinants of health, exploring health effects of changing weather conditions and use of AI
in health technologies.
Contact: hasan.sohail@tuni.fi
Johanna Pajula
Johanna Pajula is a doctoral researcher at Tampere University. She is affiliated with the Faculty of Social Sciences and is currently pursuing her doctoral studies within the Doctoral Programme in Health Sciences. Johanna has a master’s degree in Public and Global Health, and has worked with families for years as a midwife and public health nurse. Her research interests include social determinants of health, inequities, health policy and the impacts of social policy to well-being. Her current focus related to the COST-project research delves into the intersection of public health and social policy, combining qualitative and quantitative methods.
Contact: johanna.pajula@tuni.fi
Tristan Pokornyi
Tristan Pokornyi is a research assistant and master’s student currently completing the International Master’s Degree Programme in Public and Global Health (PGH) at Tampere University. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Tristan has prior experience in digital communications and data analysis in the health not-for-profit sector, with particular interests in health promotion, the social determinants of health, quantitative data insights, and cutting edge health technologies. Tristan’s current focus within the COST project involves social media and digital communication along with mixed methods analysis of the research.
Contact: tristan.pokornyi@tuni.fi