Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) is a research and development institute under the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health with a total of approximately 950 multidisciplinary and highly educated employees. The institute aims to promote health and welfare, to prevent diseases and social problems, and to develop social welfare and health care sectors.

THL seeks to serve the broader society in addition to the scientific community, actors in the field and decision makers in central government and municipalities. THL pursues and carries out its objectives by means of research, development activities, official tasks, steering through information as well as international collaboration. As the statutory statistical authority for health and welfare, THL maintains and promotes the use of a strong knowledge base within the field.

Based on the national legislation, THL is, among other functions, in charge of surveillance of vaccine preventable diseases, vaccination coverage, impact assessment and development of the national vaccination programme. THL has conducted, in collaboration with other public health and academic institutions as well as vaccine manufacturers in the EU and globally, several large‐scale vaccine effectiveness studies as well as other studies on epidemiology and immunology of vaccine preventable diseases, vaccination implementation and acceptance. THL provides the information it produces as open data.

In VAX-TRUST project, THL is a partner in all work packages.