Dr. Larsen is a sociologist by training (University of Copenhagen, 2006) and completed her PhD in Public Health (University of Southern Denmark, 2014). She has lived and worked in the Arctic with her family since 2006. She is the research director of the Centre for Public Health in Greenland (based in Copenhagen) and responsible for the research-based consultancy for the Greenland Ministry of Health (Government of Greenland). She is the PI for the Greenland Health Survey conducted for the Ministry of Health every four-six years.

Dr. Larsen is also a Fulbright Scholar and part of the second Fulbright Arctic Initiative cohort (2018-19). Recently Dr. Larsen became adjunct senior researcher at Greenland’s Center for Health Research at the University of Greenland (Ilisimatusarfik). 

Her research interests are especially implementation science, social inequality in health, mental health and resilience, youth, suicide prevention and the influence of the ongoing social transition on the health of the Greenland Inuit. Based on The Greenland Health Surveys she works with social epidemiological research to improve our understanding of health among indigenous populations in the Arctic. Furthermore, her ambition is to move public health research in Greenland in a more community- based direction with a focus on interventions as well as building on and strengthening local capacities. 

Dr. Larsen has been the President of the Circumpolar Health Research Network since 2015 and member of the Board for the Danish/Greenlandic Society for Circumpolar Health from 2015-2019. 

Dr. Larsen has been involved in Arctic Council Mental Health Projects under the Sustainable Development Working Group for a decade and has represented the Greenlandic Ministry of Health in the Arctic Human Health Expert Group (AHHEG) since 2015, which serves as an advisory expert group to SDWG.

Research centre

Greenland Center for Health Research