My research over the past 30 years is about children with long-term illness and their families. Particular focus is on promoting self-care for children with long-term illness, primarily with the help of e-health and thorough care at home, promoting health in early childhood by supporting children and parents, and developing knowledge to develop and introduce child-centered care. The research generates knowledge about how the family is affected when a child becomes chronically ill, how care and treatment affect the family's daily life, and what effects it has over time. From 2013 to 2018, I was responsible for LUC3 - Lund University Child Centered Care, a multidisciplinary research program with multi-million support from the Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare (Forte). In 2018, we received continued support from Forte through a new 6-year program support - this time to develop and evaluate e-health to assist self-care for children with long-term illness and their families. By identifying the child's and family's needs, plan, test, and implement various interventions in e-health aimed at the child and its family that can facilitate and create good conditions for individual families to support the child to achieve good health in the short and long term. 

I have started a national network for Ph.D. nurses who do research with children in Sweden, with more than 60 researchers affiliated. I also collaborate with researchers at various universities in Ethiopia on research projects aimed at improving treatment adherence for children and young people with HIV, funded by the Swedish Research Council, SIDA, and FORTE. I have initiated and coordinated the network LUCare, a multidisciplinary research network at the Faculty of Medicine to increase collaboration between different disciplines and disseminate information about health promotion measures to improve health and quality of life for people of all ages. For many years, I have had a long-term collaboration with the Faculty of Nursing at Khon Kaen University in Thailand, with whom we have for many years had a teacher and student exchange through Linnaeus Palme scholarships. 

My research has proven to be of great importance in facilitating individual children's ability to live with their illnesses. For example, we have reduced the number of children who need to be anesthetized to undergo magnetic resonance imaging examinations by undergoing age-appropriate preparations. The research is also important for health and medical care organizations that can provide better care at a lower cost, among other things, hospital-based home health care has been implemented for children with cancer in Denmark and for children who fall ill with diabetes in Sweden. Through various forms of e-health, we have shown that parents receive good support for developing self-care when their children are born prematurely or are operated on during the neonatal period. 

In 2002, I started the first specialist training for nurses in health and medical care for children and young people at Lund University. Together with a colleague, I am responsible for the postgraduate course - Complex intervention for children and young people at Lund University - the first of its kind in the Nordic region. During 2019-2020, this course has also been held in collaboration with Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. 

I am a paediatric nurse and have worked in paediatric care as a paediatric nurse, department head, care developer and clinical lecturer for over 20 years. My research interest was aroused by the practical work with sick children and their families. In 1998, I defended my dissertation on parents' participation in their children's care during their hospital stay. In 2008, I became Sweden's first professor of paediatric nursing. My research is still conducted in close collaboration with the health service both nationally and internationally.