Kari Klungsøyr

Position

Professor

Affiliation

Research groups

Research

Klungsøyr has been head of the research group ‘Registry based studies of familial risk’ at the Epidemiology and Medical Statistics Section, Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care (IGS), Faculty of Medicine, University of Bergen, and is now deputy leader of Center for translational research in Epidemiology (TRACE), IGS, UiB.

Klungsøyr’s main research field has, for more than 20 years, been reproductive health and perinatal epidemiology, where one focus has been family-dependencies and how they influence associations between risk factors and adverse pregnancy outcomes. She has also focused birth defects epidemiology, severe maternal morbidity in relation to delivery, preeclampsia, stillbirth, fertility, and associations between pregnancy and later parental health.

As senior medical officer at the MBRN, a key focus has been to work for keeping data in Norway’s health registries of good quality, and Klungsøyr has carried out several validation studies concerning diagnoses and interventions registered in the MBRN. She is now leading a large collaborative project which focuses severe adverse outcomes connected to pregnancy and delivery in mother and child, where the aims include better registration of these severe outcomes, and to evaluate the use of audit of the treatment chain to identify areas for improvement.

During the last decade, Klungsøyr has been increasingly engaged in the field of neurodevelopmental disorders, with a focus on Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Within this field she has been partner at the Centre of excellence headed by prof Jan Haavik: ‘K.G. Jebsen centre for research on Neuropsychiatric disorders’. This centre aimed to apply a translational approach to neuropsychiatric disorders, combining epidemiology, basic neuroscience, genetics, imaging, and clinical studies, and was highly successful, obtaining two financial periods.  

Klungsøyr is also partner of the project "Healthier Women", led by prof Rolv Skjærven, who received an EU ERC Advanced Grant for this project. A main aim is to use data from full reproductive histories to study associations between pregnancies and future health of the mother.  

Klungsøyr is scientific member of EuroPeristat, a European network where routine data in different European countries are used to develop and publish European indicators of perinatal health and to study perinatal topics based on these data. The network publishes reports showing the perinatal health indicators, the last report showed indicators for 2015-19: https://www.europeristat.com/

Klungsøyr is also a scientific member of EUROCAT, European network of population-based registries for the epidemiological surveillance of congenital anomalies, where she represents the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. This network, established in 1974, has since 2015 been part of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. The network has surveillance and research on congenital anomalies as their main aims, and publishes statistics on the prevalence of congenital anomalies annually: https://eu-rd-platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/eurocat_en

 

Teaching

Klungsøyr's teaching focuses different topics of basic epidemiology,- for medical students, master students in nutrition and in pharmacy and for PhD students. She also teaches some topics of Public Health.

Klungsøyr supervises and guides medical students writing their theses, medical students who have chosen the "research path" in the medical study at UiB, and PhD students.

Publications
Doctoral dissertation
Letter to the editor
Academic article
Report
Academic literature review
Poster
Academic lecture
Popular scientific article
Abstract
Reader opinion piece
Errata
Short communication
Editorial

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

Projects

Ongoing projects:

2023 -: New project, information will come in December

2022 -: "Men's health factors and risk of fetal loss and stillbirth". Role: Project leader. Funding: Norwegian association for unexpected child loss 

2021 -: "OCiNOR" - Obstetric Care in Norway - a Collaborative and Knowledge-building project". Role: Project leader - Funder: Research Council of Norway

2020 -: "TIMESPAN" - Management of chronic cardiometabolic disease and treatment discontinuity in adult ADHD patients". Role: Work Package Leader. Funder: EU  

2019/2020 -: "GlioLink" - Improving prognosis of patients with glioblastoma: Linking health registry and clinical data to basic brain tumour research". Role: Partner/supervisor. Funder: Norwegian Cancer Society / Research Council of Norway

2020 - : "NEDCOM" - Neurodevelopmental disorders and comorbidity - sex differences, risk factors and functional aspects from childhood to adulthood. Role: Project leader. Funder: several, including NEVSOM 

2019 -: “Healthier Women” - A woman´s reproductive experience. Long term implications for chronic disease and death. Role: Partner and supervisor. Funder: EU - ERC Advanced grant to prof Rolv Skjærven. 

2016 -: "Congenital limb reduction defects in Norway - epidemiology, risk factors and treatment". Role: Project leader of Part I, Partner of Part II. Collaborative project with Oslo University Hospital 

2014 -: "Cancer risk in families with children with birth defects: a Nordic collaboration". Role: Partner/supervisor. Funder: Norwegian Cancer Society