Mette Johansen

Title
Physiotherapist, MSc
Position
PhD student

Mette Johansen graduated from the Aalborg School of Physiotherapy in 1997 and has more than 20 years of clinical experience as a pediatric physiotherapist including clinical supervision of physiotherapy students from Aalborg University College. In 2012 she started her Master of Science in Physiotherapy at University of Southern Denmark, and graduated in 2014 with her Master’s thesis in Clinical Epidemiology “Exploring reasons for the observed inconsistent trial reports on intra-articular injections with hyaluronic acid in the treatment of osteoarthritis: Meta-regression analyses of randomized trials” in collaboration with Professor Robin Christensen as the main supervisor.

Mette is working at the Department of Pediatrics at Aalborg University Hospital as a physiotherapist and the national coordinator of the Danish Cerebral Palsy Follow-up Program, CPOP, which serves both as a surveillance program and a national clinical quality database. As a researcher, Mette is co-affiliated with Section for Biostatistics and Evidence-Based Research, the Parker Institute, working on various clinical epidemiological issues such as (i) setting the right research priorities, (ii) Encourage use of robust research designs, conduct and analysis, (iii) Make all information on research methods and findings accessible, (iv) Encourage the involvement of relevant stakeholders (incl. patient partners), and finally to make sure (v) Reports of research are complete and usable (independent of the findings).

Currently, Mette is working on finalizing her PhD protocol. The PhD project will evaluate diagnosis, prognosis and possible management strategies for infants with cerebral palsy (CP). Numerous decisions are made by health care professionals, on the basis of an estimated probability that a specific disease such as suspected CP in infants (i.e. the diagnostic setting) or a specific event will occur in the future (i.e. the prognostic setting) for the individual child. Choosing wisely among possible courses of action requires knowledge about the effects of those actions; medical decision makers therefore need sound causal inferences to know which treatment strategies are truly effective. Supervision in clinical epidemiology around both a prognostic and interventional setting will be provided by Section for Biostatistics and Evidence-Based Research, the Parker Institute: Causal inference around infants with cerebral palsy will involve specifying a causal question and subsequently answer it (i.e. asking answerable questions). The causal questions will be articulated in the form of a target-trial protocol, which incorporates prespecified eligibility criteria, treatment strategies, treatment assignment, start and end of follow-up, outcomes, estimands, and a data-analysis plan. These elements will be used to define the causal question(s) and how it will be answered.