Helena received her medical degree at Karolinska Institutet in 2007, the same year as she defended her PhD thesis in epidemiology/surgery. In 2009-2010 she did a Postdoc at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA, focusing on epidemiology of esophageal, stomach and liver cancer. In the middle of her internal medicine residency, in 2012, she took a sabbatical year to work as a rural physician first in Norway and then for 6 months in a district hospital in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Currently she is working part time as an assistant professor where she is the course coordinator for a large undergraduate course in Global Health. She is also working part time as a resident physician in the Department for Internal Medicine at Danderyd University Hospital. Her research today focuses on non-communicable diseases in a global context and attitudes towards health aid.