The IMPACT research group – Marie Löf

The IMPACT research group focuses on prevention of overweight and obesity in pregnancy and childhood. We use mobile phone technology (mHealth) to measure diet and physical activity, and to deliver interventions promoting a healthy lifestyle in different populations, especially in maternity and child healthcare. Our research includes mHealth for self-management and treatment of disease e.g., gestational diabetes. We provide education in Nutrition and are part of the Centre for Nutrition.

Part of the:

The research group IMPACT (Innovative use of Mobile Phones to promote physical ACTivity and nutrition across the lifespan) is a multidisciplinary team with senior researchers, postdocs, PhD students, teachers and course leaders, as well as affiliated researchers. We have various backgrounds such as nutrition, dietetics, behavioural science, medicine and physiotherapy. Please feel free to contact us if you are interested in our research projects or nutrition education offered.

The group is part of the Gastroenterology and Nutrition Unit (GUT).


 

Collaborations and networks

Centre for Nutrition
bowls with different vegetables and seeds Photo: Private

Centre for Nutrition

The Centre for Nutrition is a research centre at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge. It explores how diet composition, dietary regimes, and nutritional supplements can be used to improve human health and longevity.

KI eHealth Core Facility
Person working at laptop. Only hands are visible. Photo: Pixabay

KI eHealth Core Facility

Do you need support to conceptualize, develop, test and implement an eHealth tool or intervention? Do you want to deliver guided self-help interventions and collect self-assessment data? Visit the eHealth Core Facility to find out more.

IMPACT collaborations and networks
Network Photo: Pixabay

IMPACT collaborations and networks

Collaboration is key in research. The IMPACT group is part of several national and international research collaborations and networks. Read more here. 

Our past international collaborative EU funded projects
Logos for the BigO, Splendid, iPrognosis projects Photo: N/A

Our past international collaborative EU funded projects

Our involvement in three consecutive EU projects have allowed us to build a widespread network of collaboration with other research, clinical and private partners across Europe (Ioannis Ioakeimidis Work Unit).

News

Research projects

Health promotion and mHealth interventions
Illustration of mHealt, mobile phone and fruit and vegetables Photo: Maria Henström

Health promotion and mHealth interventions

We utilise mHealth to develop new methods for dietary and physical activity assessments as well as to deliver lifestyle interventions, to promote a healthy lifestyle in preschool aged children and pregnant women. We are also involved in other health intervention projects - read more here. 

HealthyMoms4MentalHealth
HealthyMoms4MentalHealth Photo: N/A

HealthyMoms4MentalHealth

This project aims to develop and evaluate an app to promote mental wellbeing during the perinatal period. The app is being developed together with health care professionals (e.g., midwives, obstetricians, psychologists), researchers and reference groups of pregnant women using a Human-Centred Design approach.

Technology-assisted individualized behavioral monitoring
A man eating out of a bowl - an assessment of eating behaviour in the lab Photo: Ioannis Ioakeimidis

Technology-assisted individualized behavioral monitoring

We use new technologies for unintrusive monitoring of dietary and physical activity habits and behaviors of individuals, focusing on specific clinical needs (Ioannis Ioakeimidis Work Unit).

Health4Life
Black and white sketch of a child sitting cross-legged. Photo: N/A

Health4Life

A randomized controlled trial to evaluate a digital tool (Health4Life app) for parents of children aged 2–18 months.

Publications

Selected publications

Funding

Grants

  • A digital intervention in primary health care to prevent cardiovascular disease
    The Kamprad Family Foundation
    1 March 2025 - 1 March 2028
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2025 - 31 January 2028
  • A digital, co-designed and multilingual intervention to prevent gestational diabetes (Di-Prev): a randomised controlled trial
    Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research
    1 January 2025 - 31 January 2027
  • Navigating screen time in early childhood: parents’ perceptions and attitudes to screen time and feasibility of a co-designed digital intervention
    Henning and Johan Throne Holst foundation
    1 September 2024
  • A mHealth intervention to promote healthy lifestyle behaviours from the start of life: The Health4Life trial
    Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE)
    1 January 2024 - 1 January 2026
  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 January 2024 - 31 December 2026
    The human papillomavirus (HPV) is responsible for most cervical and anogenital cancers. The HPV vaccine can effectively reduce invasive cervical cancer
    however, HPV vaccine uptake is low in certain groups due to hesitancy and refusal, which undermines the success of the vaccine. In Sweden, HPV vaccine hesitancy has mainly been observed among parents and adolescents in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities with large immigrant populations.The purpose of this project is therefore to co-design and assess the feasibility and preliminary effects of digital health intervention tools to reduce HPV vaccine hesitancy and increase uptake of this vaccine in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities in Stockholm, Sweden. Several research questions shall assess whether a co-designed digital health intervention has the potential to improve HPV uptake, awareness and confidence.The project involves three sub-studies implemented by an interdisciplinary team.  Study 1 will involve a formative stage whereby adolescents, parents/guardians and school nurses situated in socially disadvantaged areas in Stockholm will be interviewed to understand their perspectives and concerns related to the HPV vaccine. Thereafter, study 2 will use knowledge gained from study 1 to inform the co-design phase where adolescent boys/girls and their parents/guardians are invited to develop and provide feedback on content and prototypes for digital health interventions. Finally, study 3 will involve pilot-testing of the intervention for feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effect, using a cluster-randomized design.This project is highly feasible as it builds on the study team’s previous research, which show that immigrant communities in Sweden experience poorer health outcomes as well as vaccine hesitancy. Because 1 in 5 Swedes have a migrant background this study is relevant to Swedish society. An appropriate and accessible digital health intervention has the potential to prevent cervical cancer, saving lives and reducing future burdens on an overstretched Swedish healthcare system. The results from this project will be generalizable to similar contexts in Sweden and possibily beyond.
  • European Union
    1 January 2024 - 31 December 2027
    MELIORA Consortium will jointly work with local actors at different levels for the realization of eight (8) in total tailor-made lifestyle intervention and behavioural modification studies, including Artificial intelligence and digital tools, to promote sustainable behavioural changes among three target populations: i) healthy women at risk of developing breast cancer, ii) breast cancer patients and iii) breast cancer survivors. The studies will take place across 4 different European countries (Greece, Sweden, Spain and Lithuania) and 6 piloting centres targeting 2000 women in urban and rural areas including participants throughout the socioeconomic spectrum. Primary health care centres, hospitals or patients’/survivors’ organisations will be used as entry points to the community. The goal of the MELIORA Virtual Coach interventions is to evaluate its effectiveness, through assessing the effect of multiple individual and contextual factors to the uptake and sustainability of behavioural changes. At the same time, identification of specific bottlenecks and barriers that prevent the uptake of sustainable behavioural change will support the development of approaches on how to best reach and involve disadvantaged socio-economic population groups, vulnerable groups, and people living in rural areas, and will provide best practices for behavioural intervention uptake and scale-up. Regular monitoring will be ongoing during the implementation to allow corrective actions and ensure effective adaptation and uptake. Based on the study outcomes, the health economic evaluation and budget impact analysis, and data deriving from the scalability assessment, national and European stakeholders will be invited to evaluate, through workshops, the potential for adoption of the MELIORA Virtual Coach Interventions in other regions or countries in Europe. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on “Prevention & early detection (behavioural change).
  • DIGIFOOD: Improving children’s digital food environment
    UNICEF SWEDEN and Hjärt Lungfonden
    1 January 2024 - 31 July 2024
  • European Union
    1 November 2023 - 31 October 2027
    BETTER4U aims at the identification and personalized management of all weight gain determinants to battle the increasingly rising numbers of overweight/obesity, via homogenous, globally adaptable and practically assessed public health initiatives and key interventions. Building on previous key projects and biobanks, the project will focus on the hitherto neglected impact of the polygenic background of weight gain on the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions for weight management in people with overweight/obesity. BETTER4U aims to probe into the global obesity challenge, study the problem and offer solutions in a tangible realistic way with the assistance of modern AI technologies and the contribution of experts around the world. BETTER4U will be realized through the following objectives: 1. To comprehensively understand and decipher genetics, metabolomics, microbiota, socio-economic, geographical, cultural and lifestyle features linked to weight gain throughout the life course, via meta-analyses (BETTER4U data from >50 studies, >1 million individuals) and extensive literature meta-review. 2.To develop the BETTER4U intervention methodology for weight gain prevention, based on a causal AI model of obesity determinants and a pilot study in 7 European countries. 3.To deploy technology-assisted, real-time monitoring tools to measure detailed behavioral indicators and their relation to the environmental context. 4.To evaluate the efficacy of the novel BETTER4U intervention methodology in a controlled, randomized clinical trial, based on individually-tailored recommendations for lifestyle change. 5.To maximize transferability and applicability of the BETTER4U intervention methodology by identifying implementation barriers and facilitators, as well as to evaluate implementation outcomes in both participants and stakeholders. 6. To develop and disseminate the BETTER4Uobesity prevention intervention methodology guidelines using a people-centred, sustainable care approach.
  • Promoting healthy lifestyle behaviours in the first 2000 days of life to prevent overweight and obesity using mHealth interventions in primary CHC
    Karolinska Institutet (Research School in Health Sciences(
    1 September 2023 - 1 September 2027
  • The Henning & Johan Throne-Holst foundation
    1 August 2023 - 31 July 2024
  • European Union
    1 July 2023 - 30 June 2027
    PREVENT improves upscaling of primary interventions for weight control management during childhood and adolescence to reduce cancer risks in adulthood. This relies on current evidence that relates excess body weight with increased cancer risk. Towards this end, PREVENT applies a series of implementation research actions in the following directions. First, it identifies barriers to current interventions and policies preventing them from upscaling to different geographical, socio-economic, and cultural settings. Then, it introduces new multi-actor and context-aware interventions along with new user engagement strategies to face the current upscaling bottlenecks
    multi-actor in the sense that they target different types of users (e.g. students, family, educators, policymakers) and context-aware in the sense that PREVENT interventions are tailored to the specific implementation places (class, canteen, sports fields, labs, outside school). The PREVENT new policies are adapted, piloted, and scaled up within the schools’ communities of three European countries facing different epidemiological settings on childhood obesity, geographic, socio-economic and cultural attributes. The pilots are designed to be holistic end-to-end ecosystems, including users, medical professionals, policymakers, public authorities, and civil communities. They focus on the whole school communities of Greece, Sweden, and Spain-Catalonia, that is, PREVENT outreach to more than 3.3 million students, required for guideline provisioning, large-scale implementation, multi-parameter assessment, and scaling-up. Co-creation, active behavioral change, self-evaluation through user empowerment, motivational interviewing, social innovation, digital-assistive engagement, health apps, and multi-domain assessment are implementation research aspects of PREVENT to advance user acceptability and compatibility with existing policies, and thus improve sustainability and upscaling. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on ""Prevention and Early Detection".
  • European Union
    1 May 2023 - 30 April 2027
    During the last decades, overweight & obesity rates have reached epidemic proportions across EU. Prevalence in childhood is particularly alarming, resulting in psychological impacts & increased risks for NCDs. However, although obesity-related research has provided interesting results, several issues arise due to the lack of meta-reviews & the nature of data collected. To address this, Bio-Streams aims on supporting the optimal use (and re-use) of health data (e.g. biological, demographic, epigenetic, etc.) to generate metadata/knowledge and provide new evidences, methodologies & tools for: a) creating and deploying the Bio-Streams Biobank that will act as a scientific platform for research in obesity and better diagnostic and therapeutic approaches
    b) understanding the transition from metabolically healthy to unhealthy, preventing under age obesity
    c) designing better strategies to educate & empower young citizens for weight self-management
    d) coordinating authorities & policy makers to develop cross-sectoral solutions for health promotion & under age obesity prevention. Specifically, Bio-Streams delivers a dedicated under age obesity biobank providing real-world health data (including biospecimens, anthropometrics, behavioural and cost data) from retrospective and prospective sources, while taking into account efficient data harmonisation and standardisation principles, transforming data valorisation towards under age obesity prevention and future research. Moreover, the Bio-Streams framework for data handling, provides robust and transparent methodologies for operational procedures (data infrastructures), analysis and reporting (via meta-reviews and AI-based Apps/components, evaluated via 12 multi-site pilots (7 clinical and 5 schools)), citizen awareness and lifestyle alteration, delivering obesity prevention guidelines, knowledge generation while fostering considerable opportunities for regional and national health authorities/policymakers.
  • European Union _ Erasmus plus
    1 November 2022 - 30 October 2025
    Since the Green Revolution (1960s), industrial farming has become common place, successfully producing bulk quantities of food commodities for much of the world. However, the environmental and climate impacts of this approach are now being revealed, among which soil degradation, biodiversity loss, global warming and freshwater scarcity. Additionally, the current food system (fs) does not provide a robust approach to effective distribution and nutritional wellbeing, particularly as the world population continues to grow. To support a fundamental shift in our FS, it is essential to engage & educate youngsters about the connection between food and environment. Therefore, educating teachers and subsequently students about stateof-the-art policies, strategies & approaches towards a sustainable fs (SFS) is an issue of major importance. Following the echo from the European Green Deal (EU 2019) which recognises the key role of schools to engage with the wider community on the changes needed for a successful transition to become climate neutral by 2050, the FoodSHIFT Pathways aims to stimulate innovative thinking as a key to unlocking strategies that can develop a SFS. To achieve this aim, the proposed project is going to deploy an approach that could as reference point for future-oriented curricula that better meet the current environmental challenges. More specifically the project will a) enhance the co-creation of innovation & knowledge in FS and related bio-value chains, b) develop a roadmap for FS change and c) induce a paradigm shift from a linear to a cyclical approach of learning. The core outcome will be a series of practices enriched with interactive digital resources, the FoodSHIFT Pathways focusing on describing the status & presenting future-thinking approaches to SFS. Using interactive videos & digital storytelling techniques these practices will be treated as case studies for the schools to explore. Through the provision of a training programme for a transition to more SFS the project is expected to generate new knowledge needed for similar achievements beyond the specific cases as well as develop teachers/students’ SC. The approach moves beyond a country-specific curriculum and aims at guiding curriculum innovation. The project will demonstrate how schools can be transformed to hubs of innovation for their local communities in the fs sector acting as change agents. Based on initial scenarios that will be developed by the team, teachers & students will co-develop their own projects enriched with external expertise. Such an approach holds a great potential as a) teachers & students are developing content that is meaningful for them and b) enables schools and their communities to participate in high quality projects in both curricular and extracurricular contexts (formal, non- formal & informal education). The project will contribute to behavioural changes for individual preferences, consumption habits & and lifestyles of students & beyond
  • Development and validation of the Global Adolescent and Child Physical Activity Questionnaire (GAC-PAQ): A multi-country study across six continents
    Canadian Institutes of Health Research
    1 October 2022 - 30 September 2025
  • Large-scale implementation of a mHealth obesity prevention program within Swedish primary child healthcare: MINISTOP 3.0
    The Swedish Cancer Society
    1 April 2022 - 31 January 2025
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2022 - 31 December 2024
  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 January 2022 - 31 December 2024
  • UNICEF SWEDEN & Hjärt Lungfonden
    1 October 2021 - 30 June 2022
  • European Union
    1 April 2021 - 31 March 2025
  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 December 2018 - 30 November 2024
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2017 - 31 December 2019

Staff and contact

Group leader

All members of the group

Education in nutrition

The Bachelor programme in Nutrition (180 hp, Swe)
Lots of fast food with high fat content Photo: Getty Images

The Bachelor programme in Nutrition (180 hp, Swe)

The Bachelor programme in Nutrition is given by Stockholm University (SU) but all nutrition related courses are held at MedH, KI. The programme is grounded in natural science and covers various topics within the field of nutrition - from chemistry, biology and molecular nutrition to clinical aspects, epidemiology and public health.

The Global Masters' programme in Nutrition Science (120 ECTS)
Close up on various vegetables and fruits

The Global Masters' programme in Nutrition Science (120 ECTS)

Read more about our Global Masters' programme in Nutrition Science at KI, which from 2022 is a 2-year program at MedH, KI. What is nutrition science, why study it, and what will you learn? Also, listen to what some of our former students got to say. 

Looking for a BCs or MSc or project? PhD exchange? Postdoc?

Students in nutrition or similar programs who are interested in our research are welcome to contact Maria Henström (Bachelor students), Christine Delisle Nyström (Master students) or Marie Löf (PhD students and international postdocs). Please include your CV and letter of interest. 

Doctoral courses arranged by IMPACT group members

If you are a PhD student (or postdoc) and interested in eHealth interventions you are welcome to apply to these new doctoral courses:

  • "Methods for design and formative evaluation of eHealth interventions", 3 credits (#5301: course syllabus)
    Course leader: Maria Henström. Examiner and teacher: Prof Sabine Koch 
  • "Digital lifestyle interventions- from idea to implementation", 3 credits
    Course leader: Marie Löf. More info will come soon. 

Free-standing courses at MedH

MedH also arrange free-standing courses within the field of nutrition. at the moment we offer one course:

 

 

Keywords:
Diet, Food, and Nutrition Epidemiology Nutrition and Dietetics Pediatrics Public Health, Global Health and Social Medicine
Content reviewer:
Marie Löf
Karin Vikström
04-09-2025