Assistant Professor Katri Aaltonen joined the Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, on 1 April 2026.
What are your research topics?
I study pharmaceutical governance and funding, pharmaceutical policy, equitable access to medicines, the quality of pharmacotherapy, and other societal issues related to medicines and the pharmacy field. I also study the service system, service pathways, and service integration among children, young people, and families with children.
Where and how does the topic of your research have an impact?
Research on the service system is needed to ensure that scarce resources are allocated in a sustainable and equitable manner. This is important because technological change, population ageing, globalisation, and geopolitical tensions are currently transforming the economic and political environment at an exceptionally rapid pace.
What is particularly inspiring in your field right now?
I am currently thinking about medicalisation and the individualisation of societies. Many public health problems, such as mental health problems among young people and the obesity epidemic, have social origins. Prevention would be the most sustainable approach, yet the debate tends to focus on individual-level and corrective measures. New medicines, for example, are important advances in care, but they do not, by themselves, adequately address the underlying social and structural causes. Untangling these complexities requires a multidisciplinary approach. What particularly inspires me is potential of pharmaceutical science expertise to contribute to solutions.
Aaltonen will continue in her role as Academy Research Fellow at the University of Turku's INVEST Research Center and Flagship until the end of her fellowship. A sub-study examining pharmaceutical steering and budgeting models across Swedish regions is currently being launched in collaboration with Uppsala University.
Aaltonen also works in part at the Social Insurance Institution (Kela) and the Wellbeing Services County of Southwest Finland (Varha), in developing legislative microsimulation, contributing to policy evaluations, and constructung new register data to promote service system reseach.