Elisabeth Søndergaard

Elisabeth Søndergaard serves as a Research Fellow at the Research Unit for General Practice in Region Zealand and Copenhagen, and as an External Lecturer within the University of Copenhagen's Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Department of Public Health. Her anthropological expertise focuses on vulnerable populations and social inequality in healthcare systems across primary care settings.

Her educational foundation includes a 2023 Ph.D. dissertation examining social relationships and children's health in socioeconomically disadvantaged Lolland-Falster families, building on her background in anthropology. This research employed mixed methods combining Lolland-Falster Health Study (LOFUS) survey data with Danish national registry records.

Dr. Søndergaard's research program investigates critical intersections of family dynamics and health outcomes, with three active projects: palliative care timing in primary practice, intergenerational childhood experience impacts on child health, and family adaptation to children's chronic atopic conditions. Her work emphasizes compensatory parental labor and risk-minimization behaviors through qualitative interviews and quantitative analysis.

Recent publications (2023-2025) demonstrate consistent output in Scandinavian primary care journals, revealing thematic clusters around childhood chronic illness experiences, family conflict health impacts, and equity-focused service implementations like Service 2150. Her methodological approach bridges qualitative depth with register-based epidemiology, particularly through the LOFUS cohort.

She teaches first-semester medical students in the 'Early Patient Contact' program, translating research insights into clinical education. Current collaborations include the SOFIA project on severe mental illness and cross-unit research workshops fostering interdisciplinary knowledge exchange within Copenhagen's primary care research ecosystem.

Based at the Research Unit for General Practice, she actively participates in Copenhagen's primary care research network, utilizing Øster Farimagsgade facilities while contributing to regional initiatives addressing health disparities through the Lolland-Falster Health Study framework.