Anna Sidorchuk

I am a Principal Researcher and Docent in Epidemiology at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience.

By the background, I am a medical doctor with specialization in epidemiology and preventive medicine. In 2007, I obtained my PhD in epidemiology from the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet (KI), and then undertook a postdoctoral training in public health epidemiology at KI. After completion of the postdoc period, I worked as an assistant professor and research coordinator at the Department of Public Health Sciences, KI, focusing on register-based research in the area of substance use epidemiology and intergenerational transmission of health and ill-health determinants. In 2017, I joined the research group “Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders Across the Lifespan” at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, led by Professor David Mataix-Cols, where I started working with a wide range of register-based studies in pharmacoepidemiology and psychiatric epidemiology. Within the research group, I am a team leader for the “Epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology group”.

My main research interests are in the fields of psychiatric epidemiology, including substance use epidemiology, and pharmacoepidemiology of psychiatric disorders.

The “Epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology group”, for which I am a team leader, conducts population-based studies of various epidemiological designs using a wide variety of large-scale data from the Swedish nationwide registers. A major ongoing project specifically focuses on understanding the predictors and consequences (e.g., neurodevelopmental consequences, subsequent development of infections, substance misuse, etc.) of inappropriate prescription of benzodiazepines, with a further aim at developing an easily scalable intervention to reduce long-term benzodiazepine prescribing in primary care. I also work with the project focusing on clinical and socioeconomic outcomes among children of parents dual-affected with psychiatric disorders. In addition, my research involves conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses on various topics of psychiatric epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology.

I am currently a course director, lecturer, and examiner for an on-going PhD course “K8F5254: How to conduct systematic reviews and meta-analyses”, and an invited teacher on a PhD course “2972: Basic pharmacoepidemiology in a global context”.

I am a frequent lecturer for PhD, master, and bachelor students as well as for healthcare practitioners on the topics of epidemiology (basic and advanced epidemiology, psychiatric epidemiology, substance use epidemiology), public health science (theory and practice of public health research and public health epidemiology), systematic reviews with quantitative and qualitative data synthesis, and biostatistics (basic and advanced methods). I am the main supervisor for a PhD student Xinchen Wang (PhD project on-going) and was a main supervisor for a postdoctoral researcher Dr Isabella Ekheden (alumni). At Karolinska Institutet, I am also a member of the KI Course and Programme Committee.