Roosa Sofia Tikkanen
Postdoctoral Researcher
Responsibilities
Roosa Sofia Tikkanen is a health policy researcher with 15 years of experience from academic, think-tank/foundation, consulting and private sectors. Her research has focused on health inequalities, primary health care, health workforce, comparative health systems performance, and women’s and maternal health care. Dr. Tikkanen’s doctoral thesis in political science from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (2025) focused on the political economy of community health workers, examining their working conditions, labor policies and occupational health outcomes, with a case study in Nepal conducted in collaboration with Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences. In her role is as Postdoctoral Researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo, Norway, she supports projects examining the effect and implementation of digital health interventions to improve maternal and child health in Sub-Saharan African contexts. Dr. Tikkanen is a former Senior Researcher in International Health Policy at the Commownealth Fund in New York, has consulted for the OECD’s Health Division and the World Health Organization, and is an Affiliate Researcher at the Global Primary Care & Future Health Systems unit at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care, Oxford University. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methods, her research has been published in a range of high-impact peer-reviewed journals including Health Policy & Planning, Social Science and Medicine – Health Systems, New England Journal of Medicine, BMJ Global Health, the International Journal of Equity in Health, and Health Affairs. A trained neuroscientist, Dr. Tikkanen holds a Masters in Public Health in Health Policy from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Masters in Research in Integrative Biology from the University of Manchester.
Health Policy, Community health, Health Inequalities, Global Health, Primary health care