Leena Paakkari

Ms. Leena Paakkari is a Senior Lecturer in health education teacher training at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her academic and research work focuses on the role of health education in schools, with a particular emphasis on health literacy, curriculum development, and the pedagogical and ethical foundations of health learning in formal education settings.

Her research interests include the conceptualization and measurement of health literacy among children and adolescents, teacher education in health subjects, and the development of learning outcomes for school-based health education. She has been actively involved in designing strategies to integrate health literacy into school curricula and in evaluating its role in promoting informed health choices and behaviors among students.

Ms. Paakkari is also a contributing researcher in the international Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, a World Health Organization collaborative initiative. Her involvement includes assessing health literacy levels among secondary school students and exploring the relationship between health literacy and health behaviors in adolescent populations across national and international contexts.

In addition to her research activities, she supervises doctoral students working on related topics in health literacy and school health education. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and contributed to academic discourse on the ethical dimensions of promoting health literacy in youth populations.

Ms. Paakkari continues to support the development of evidence-informed health education policies and practices that prepare teachers and empower students with essential health competencies.

‍