Helle Krone-Hjertstrøm is a researcher and leader of the research group Social and Ecological Sustainability. She holds a master’s degree in sociology from UiT The Arctic University of Norway and is now completing a PhD in health sciences at the same university.

Academically, she has particular expertise in health services research, qualitative methods, ethnography, implementation and evaluation. Her research interests include municipal transformation and health policy, with an emphasis on how political initiatives and new services are translated into local practice – and how this shapes everyday work, collaboration, organization and competence.

She has participated in a number of research and evaluation projects, including evaluation of the Escalation Plan against Violence and Abuse, projects on municipal practice and organization of municipal health and care services, as well as situation and needs analyses. She also has experience from projects related to municipal public health work, including the development of public health overviews and evaluation of public health measures.

In her doctoral project, she examines how a decentralized health policy affects the organization of municipal health and care services, with an ethnographic perspective on the implementation of a municipal acute inpatient unit (KAD) in Northern Norway. The dissertation particularly highlights the nurses’ organizational competence as crucial for the development of health services. Furthermore, that smaller municipalities may have an advantage in combining proximity to residents with flexible solutions that can more easily be adapted to local needs and practices.

Keywords: Health services research, Health policy, Municipal transformation, Municipal public health work, Implementation and evaluation, Organization of health and care services, Social exclusion, Program theory and evaluation methodology, and Qualitative method and ethnography