Research Interests

Professor Skou has vast research experience within the field of exercise as treatment of osteoarthritis and other chronic conditions as well as in people with multiple chronic conditions. His main interest is to advance clinical care of people with chronic conditions through evidence-based treatments developed, evaluated and implemented in a close, interprofessional collaboration between patients, clinicians and other stakeholders.

Professor Skou is the author of +400 publications, including +300 peer-reviewed original publications. He has published in several high-impact journals, including NEJM, Nature, Lancet, Nature Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, BMJ and Nature Reviews with +60 of his papers having an Altmetrics score in the top 5% of all research output scored. His H-index is 40 (Scopus), and he has been cited +28,000 times. His field-weighted citation impact is 12.5 in 2021-2024 (1.0 is the world average, SciVal), and he is in top-2% cited researchers in 2024 (Stanford University list) and in top-0.05% of +300,000 researchers in rehabilitation worldwide, Expertscape). He has supervised +25 PhD-students across professions, countries, and fields of research.

In total, professor Skou has attained +200 million DKK as main applicant, co-applicant or supervisor on national and international grant application, including the highly prestigious ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council of 1.5 million EUR, a 6.1 million EUR consortium grant from Horizon 2020 and a Sapere Aude research talent grant from Independent Research Fund Denmark.

Professor Skou has given +120 lectures at international and Danish conferences/symposiums or invited scientific or public presentations. His research has been included in +333 policy mentions in 74 unique policy documents across at least 22 countries, and included in 23 clinical guideline mentions in 17 unique clinical guidelines in 8 specified countries. Furthermore, it has been included in 1587 news stories and has been mentioned in the media and social media across at least 132 countries (Altmetric data). This includes several stories in Danish national TV and radio as well as large national and international newspapers. In addition to lectures and appearances in traditional media outlets, he uses a broad range of ways to ensure widespread dissemination of research to support implementation of evidence-based care, including social media (+3,000 followers on Twitter, +1,300 on LinkedIn), podcasts and popular science media.

One of professor Skou’s main achievements, which has had a large societal impact in Denmark and internationally is the development of the Good Life with osteoArthritis in Denmark (GLA:D^®) program for people with knee and hip osteoarthritis. The GLA:D^® program is an outstanding, award-winning example of how to successfully implement evidence-based clinical guidelines in primary health care. Since 2013, more than 1,500 clinicians nationwide have been trained and delivered GLA:D^® to more than 80,000 people (www.gladdanmark.dk). GLA:D^® has served as a model for establishing similar initiatives in other conditions (low back pain) and other countries including Canada, Australia, China, Switzerland, New Zealand, Austria, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany and Finland (www.gladinternational.org). In 2019, GLA:D^® won the Value-Based Health Care (VBHC) Main Prize in competition with more than 175 international applications from all medical fields. The VBHC Prize rewards and recognizes inspiring initiatives that have adopted a fundamentally new line of thinking in creating excellent patient value in terms of real outcomes and real costs.

Professor Skou has received eight awards recognizing his research and impact, including the OARSI Rising Star Clinical Award 2022 and Sapere Aude: Research Talent Award 2016 from the Independent Research Fund Denmark. As a recognition of his scientific qualifications, he has served on several boards, scientific committees and advisory boards, including the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) clinical trial recommendation panel (2015), the OARSI task force on interactive education program for raising awareness of osteoarthritis treatment and pain management (2020-2021), the Danish Health and Medicines Authority task force preparing guidelines for meniscus pathology in the knee (2016) and prevention (2023) and their advisory group for care pathways for individuals with chronic conditions (2025) and The Danish Health Technology Council committee preparing guidelines for the treatment of knee pain (2024). Furthermore, he has been the reviewer of several national and international grants, e.g. for the National Institute for Health Research under NHS and Versus Arthritis in the UK.