Maria Henström

Maria Henström

Assistant Professor
Visiting address: Blickagången 16, 14152 Flemingsberg
Postal address: H2 Biovetenskaper och näringslära, H2 BioNut Löf, 171 77 Stockholm

About me

  • Assistant Professor and nutritionist in the IMPACT research group [1] led by Prof Marie Löf, working with mHealth/eHealth interventions to promote a healthy lifestyle from the start of life. I am also affiliated to the University of Newcastle, Australia, as an Honorary Lecturer through a collaborative child feeding intervention project (PICNIC [2]) which I aim to bring to Sweden. Furthermore, I am highly involved in nutrition education and enjoy teaching. I am Deputy Study director for the bachelor programme in nutrition at Stockholm University in collaboration with KI, but also course leader and teacher on bachelor-, master- and doctoral level.
    [1] https://ki.se/en/bionut/the-impact-research-group-marie-lof
    [2] https://www.picnicproject.com.au/

Research

  • In the IMPACT research group, I am involved in various mHealth/eHealth research projects and preventive health interventions, with most focus on young children and their parents. We are also part of the Centre for Nutrition [1] at KI, as well as the KI eHealth Core Facility [2] which aim to support other researchers within eHealth. I have a nutrition background (educated nutritionist) and finished my PhD in Medical Science in May 2018 at the Dept. of Biosciences and Nutrition (BioNut), Karolinska Institutet. My doctoral studies aimed to use genetic association to understand more about the pathophysiology of irritable bowel syndrome, IBS [3]. However, I then changed my research area completely. Now, my greatest interest lies in the first years of life, where I am focused on child nutrition, eating behaviour and parents feeding practices. I want to contribute to the development and implementation of programs to better support parents in establishing healthy eating and activity habits for their children already from food introduction. I also believe there is great potential in using parents' natural ability to support and inspire each other (peer-education) and I want to explore ways of effectively disseminate evidence-based child feeding information and support through online communication and social networks.
    [1] https://ki.se/en/bionut/centre-for-nutrition
    [2] https://ki.se/en/research/ehealth-core-facility
    [3] https://openarchive.ki.se/xmlui/handle/10616/46291

Teaching

  • I am highly involved in higher education through teaching and course leading at bachelor-, master- and doctoral level. I have a strong pedagogic interest and practice teaching and course leading at the bachelor/masters program in nutrition [1] at SU/KI, for instance in the topics human physiology, formative evaluation of eHealth tools, and popular science communication of nutrition science. I also guest lecture at other courses. Since 2022 I am the Deputy study director of the bachelor program in Nutrition (run by Stockholm University in collaboration with BioNut, KI).
    [1] https://ki.se/en/bionut/education-in-nutrition-science

Articles

All other publications

Employments

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Huddinge, Karolinska Institutet, 2024-2027
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, Karolinska Institutet, 2023-2024

Degrees and Education

  • Degree Of Doctor Of Philosophy, Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, Karolinska Institutet, 2018

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