Prof. Arja R Aro is Professor of Public Health (Retired 2019), University of Southern Denmark (SDU). She also holds Title of Docent (Health Psychology), University of Turku, Finland. Her academic degree of PhD is from University of Turku, and DSc (Health Services Research) from Erasmus University Rotterdam (NIHES), The Netherlands. In addition, Prof. Aro is Licensed Psychologist, Finland.
Prof. Aro has extensive international experience in research, capacity building, program development and evaluation. She has also functioned in various advisor and mentor roles. Her research areas in public health, health promotion and health psychology cover quality of life, screening programs, women’s health, risk perception and health communication, evidence-informed policy making and research integrity. Her teaching experience comes from Denmark, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands and Finland.
Prof. Aro has been principal investigator in REPOPA project (REsearch into POlicy to enhance Physical Activity | FP7 | CORDIS | European Commission), and co-researcher in e.g. CONFIDE project in Tunisia (https://confide.publichealth.ro/), Path2Integrity Horizon 2020 project (https://www.path2integrity.eu/), all funded by European Union. In addition, her research projects include topics such as participatory approach to increase physical activity in schools, and previously, best practice guideline development, breast cancer, prenatal and genetic screening.
Prof. Aro has published over 400 papers, including papers from Nepal. In her SDU position she taught and supervised MSc Public Health students from Nepal. Also at present, she is a co supervisor of a Nepali PhD student, whose thesis concerns human trafficking. In addition, she successfully collaborated with several Nepali teaching assistants in BSc programs in Saudi-Arabia. She also gave a workshop on health promotion at Kathmandu University in 2017.