Responsibilities and research areas
Lærke Mygind Grønfeldt (publishing under 'Lærke Mygind') is a researcher at the Center for Clinical Research and Prevention (CCRP), Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital. She holds a MSc in Sociology from the University of Copenhagen and a joint PhD from the University of Copenhagen and Deakin University, Australia. Her work is grounded in interdisciplinary prevention research spanning sociology, epidemiology, psychology, and implementation science, with a particular focus on mission-oriented and systems-based approaches to prevention and health promotion.
She has extensive experience working across the health, social, and education sectors, including universities, municipalities, and practice-based partnerships. Over the past years, she has led and contributed to a large number of research, intervention, and implementation projects targeting children, families, and communities, with a strong emphasis on equity and early prevention. She has also been actively involved in international collaborations and networks, including leadership roles in global initiatives on active outdoor play.
Her research broadly focuses on the social structures, environments, and institutional arrangements that shape life chances and developmental trajectories. This includes a sociological and systems-oriented perspective on prevention, where interventions are understood as embedded in broader institutional and societal contexts, including emerging approaches to mission-driven innovation and cross-sector collaboration.
Based on CCRP's ambition to strengthen population health and reduce health inequities, her main research areas and interests include:
- Promotion of children's mental, physical, and social wellbeing with a life-course and equity perspective
- Development, evaluation, and implementation of complex “real-world" interventions across health, social, and educational settings
- Prevention research in vulnerable populations and high-risk settings, including family- and community-based approaches
- Interactions between social and natural environments, learning, and health, including sociological and contextual mechanisms
- Mission-oriented innovation, systems thinking, and research-based knowledge translation and implementation
- Theory-building on the institutionalisation of prevention, including how preventive interventions, practices, and logics become embedded, sustained, and scaled within and across welfare systems and sectors
Selected positions of trust, activities and honours / awards
Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI for the research and intervention projects The Family Rocket, STIME, Mission Driven Partnerships, Mapping of Prevention in Public Housing and others.
Member of steering committee for the research and intervention project the Family Rocket 2.0 (2026+)
Member of the 2025 Position Statement on Active Outdoor Play International Leadership Group (2023+)
Resource person in the Center for Children and Nature (2019+)
Member of PLaTO-Net, Play, Learn, and Teach Outdoors Network (2019+)
Mentor and supervisor for several PhD students and Master Thesis students.
Recipient of the Cognitive Neuroscience Unit (CNU) Award for Best HDR Student Research Publication (2021).
Selected
publications
Mygind L, Amholt TT, Siemsen, N., Bjerre, KS, Schiøtz, ML (2026) Effectiveness, mechanisms, implementation, and cost-offset of an intersectoral prevention program targeting youth mental health difficulties: The STIME study protocol. BMC Public Health. 10.1186/s12889-026-28013-9
Mygind, L., Johnstone, A., Kryeziu, A.R., Billet, B., Delisle Nyström, C., Sandseter, E.B., Mäestu, E., Lemberg, G.M., Cante, G., Dodd, H., Brazo-Sayavera, J., Jarani, J., Maciaszek, K., Pentzou, K., Bølling, M., Bloemen, M.A.T., Mannello, M., Bradwell, M., Löf, M., Kangas, M., Leather, M., Bergin, M., Bezjak, N., Bakalár, P., Salaj, S., Morrison, S.A., Siklander, S., Veiga-Seijo, S., Popovic, S., Csányi, T., Morgenthaler, T., Bentsen, P. (2026) Outdoor play in Europe: Terminology and state of research, practice, and policy. European Journal of Public Health. 36(9), ckag040, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckag040
de Lannoy, L., Lee, E.-Y., Ryu, S., Lopes, O., S. Cheruvathur, J., Thankarajah, A., Adjei Boadi, D., de Barros, I., Duncan, S., James, M. E., Mygind, L., Monro Miller, R., Vanderloo, L. M., Wang, P.-Y., Heather, L., & Tremblay, M. S. (2025). 2025 position statement on active outdoor play: Process and methodology. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 22(1), 118. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-025-01806-8
Mygind L, Amholt TT, Kurtzhals M, Elsborg P, Blicher IF, Seeberg M, Kiilerich K, Bentsen P. (2025) Emotional Literacy: The Missing Link in health literacy for underserved populations public health, special issue on health literacy. Public Health. Aug 7;247:105888. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2025.105888. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 40782594.
Larsen, S.R., Rakesh, D., Allen, N. B., Whittle, S., Enticott, P.G., & Mygind, L. (2025) Residential greenness and mental health during adolescence: A longitudinal, pre-registered study. Environmental Health. doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2025.122150
Kurtzhals, M., Bjerregaard, A.L., Hybschmann-Nielsen, J., DeSilva, B., Elsborg, P., Timm, A., Thygesen, L.C., Kurtzhals, P., Flensborg-Madsen, T., Bentsen, P., & Mygind, L. (2024) A systematic review and meta-analysis of the child-level effects of family-based interventions for the prevention of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Obesity Reviews. doi: 10.1111/obr.13742
Mygind, L., Greenwood, C., Letcher, P., Olsson, C., Mavoa, S., Enticott, P. G., Bentsen, P., Macdonald, J., Spry, L., Thomson, K., Hutchinson, D., Wang, Y., Lycett, K., & Flensborg-Madsen, T. (2023). Neighbourhood nature as an ecological precursor of parenting practices, infant-parent bonding, and infant socioemotional function? Environment & Behavior, 55(4). doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/00139165231182.
Mygind, L., Clark, G. M., Bigelow, F. J., Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M., Knibbs, L. D., Mavoa, S., Flensborg-Madsen, T., Bentsen, P., Lum, J., & Enticott, P. G. (2023). Green enrichment for better mind readers? Residential nature and social brain function in childhood. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 88, 102029. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102029.
Wang, Y., Crowe, M., Knibbs, L. D., Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M., Mygind, L., Kerr, J. A., Wake, M., Olsson, C. A., Enticott, P. G., Peters, R. L., Daraganova, G., Mavoa, S., & Lycett, K. (2023). Greenness modifies the association between ambient air pollution and cognitive function in Australian adolescents, but not in mid-life adults. Environmental Pollution, 324, 121329. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2023.121329.
Bentsen, P., Mygind, L., Elsborg, P., Nielsen, G., & Mygind, E. (2021). Education outside the classroom as upstream physical activity promotion: integrating physical activity in children's everyday settings. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health. 50(3):303-311. doi: 10.1177/1403494821993715.
Mygind, L., Kurtzhals, M., Nowell, C., Melby, P., Stevenson, M., Nieuwenhuijsen, M., Lum, J., Flensborg-Madsen, T., Bentsen, P., Enticott, P. (2021). Landscapes of becoming social: A systematic review of associations and mediators between interactions with nature and socioemotional development in children. Environment International. Jan; 146:106238. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2020.106238
Mygind, L., Kjeldsted, E., Hartmeyer, R., Bølling, M., Mygind, E., Bentsen, P. (2019). Mental, physical and social health benefits of immersive nature-experience for children and adolescents: A systematic review and quality assessment of the evidence. Health and Place 58: 102136. doi: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2019.05.014.