Working group “Epidemiology and social epidemiology”

Research on the origin of chronic and acute disease needs to address the social context as most of existing risk factors arise from a social, economic and cultural context. In different projects and collaborations we are participating in research on psychosocial risk factors (e.g. stress, social isolation), the effect of poverty and social inequality on health and the background and consequences of health behaviours. We mainly focus on mental illnesses and cardiovascular diseases.
Another important aspect is the application and improvement of empirical methods. Scientists in this working group have broad experience with large quantitative epidemiological studies and are familiar with qualitative methods as well. For this, solid methodological training in the area of data collection and statistical analysis is crucial.
Research topics include:

• Social inequality and health: theory and empirical practice
• The influence of work on health inequalities
• Health inequalities among children and adolescents
• Life course epidemiology
• Risk factors and early diagnosis of cardiovascular disease.
• Risk factors and early diagnosis of mental illnesses.
• Implementation of the population-based Heinz Nixdorf Recall Study and the Heinz Nixdorf Recall Multiple Generations Study
• Counselling in working groups of the National Cohort (NaKo) Study

Main methods:
Collection of primary data
Epidemiological studies
Analysis of secondary data
Analysis of biographical data (Sequence analysis)
Evaluation research
Empirical social research
Surveys (Design/ Control/ Scoring, Evaluation)