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Katja Boersma

Katja Boersma Position: Professor School/office: School of Behavioural, Social and Legal Sciences

Email: a2F0amEuYm9lcnNtYTtvcnUuc2U=

Phone: No number available

Room: L2641

Katja Boersma
Research subject Research environments

About Katja Boersma

Background

Katja Boersma is Professor of Psychology and a member of the Center for Health and Medical Psychology (CHAMP). She received a masters in psychology from Groningen University (major in clinical-, minor in social psychology) in the Netherlands in 1998, and is a licensed psychologist in Sweden since 2001. She completed her PhD working at the behavioral medicine unit of the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Clinic at the University Hospital in Örebro and defended her doctoral thesis "Fear and avoidance in the development of a persistent musculoskeletal pain problems. Implications for secondary prevention” in 2005. She is employed at Örebro University since January 2007.

Research

Katja's main research interests concern the fields of health psychology and revolve around understanding the role of psychological processes in the experience of persistent pain and its potentially negative consequences. With diverse methodologies she studies the individual differences in for example emotional suffering, functional disability, overuse of prescription medication and sick leave. An overarching goal is to develop and improve upon methods for the prevention and treatment of chronic pain problems. Her research also encompasses other areas, such as hypersensitivity to odors and irritants, as well as stress-related problems. Examples of current research projects and themes are:

1. Mental health and sick leave from a life course perspective - mapping trajectories from childhood to retirement age (IDA Work project);

 

2. Opioid prescribing for chronic pain (doctoral projects by Elsa Ekelin and Jennifer Amin);

3. Evaluation of a model for optimizing pain management in patients prescribed opioids for chronic non-cancer pain (the Opiprim project, in collaboration with Uppsala University);

4. The effect of CBT for hypersensitivity to odors and irritants: a ‘proof-of-concept’ single-case experimental design (the Odor Hypersensitivity Project, in collaboration with the Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Örebro University Hospital).

Education

Katja's main teaching responsibilities are within the psychology program at Örebro University. Current areas of teaching are health psychology (semester 8) and examination and supervision of masters theses (semester 10).

Research projects

Active projects

Completed projects

Publications

Articles in journals |  Articles, reviews/surveys |  Chapters in books |  Conference papers |  Manuscripts | 

Articles in journals

Articles, reviews/surveys

Chapters in books

Conference papers

Manuscripts