The Institute of Medical Sociology in Düsseldorf researches and teaches how social circumstances influence the development, trajectory and treatment of health and diseases.
Every individual's health is defined by socially formed chances and risks: Health behaviour, stress, unemployment, social support, loneliness and poverty are few examples. Our institute bundles knowledge on how these factors influence the development of diseases. Knowing these influences allows to identify groups in society with high health risks, to design targeted medical interventions and to develop adequate prevention programs.
The institute is part of the newly founded interdisciplinary „Centre for Health and Society“ at the medical faculty.
Research
WG's
The focus of research in this working group are the consequences of different employment and working conditions on health of working women and men. In addition to general questions of occupational epidemiology, our focus is on psychosocial stress at work.
The working group „Prevention research“ works on a broad spectrum of prevention topics and investigates current developments, such as the contribution of prevention to the reduction of social inequality or new approaches to work place based prevention. In addition to the analysis of processes and effects of prevention and health promotion, we also aim at advancing methodological approaches of prevention research.
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.
Projects
Ziel des Projektes Dynamik 4.0 ist es, ein „Dynamisches System“ zu entwickeln, mit dem kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) in der Industrie 4.0 im Rahmen der Gefährdungsbeurteilung psychischer Belastung (GBP) zielgerichtet und wirkungsvoll Arbeitsschutzmaßnahmen ableiten und gestalten können.
Das interdisziplinäre Forschungsprojekt PragmatiKK untersucht jetzt: Welche Maßnahmen helfen Kleinst- und Kleinstunternehmen (KKU) wirklich bei der Stressprävention weiter?