Chair of Social and Preventive Medicine
Structural area of Cognitive Sciences – Department of Sport and Health Sciences
Social and preventive medicine investigates how psychosocial factors influence health and illness across the life span. In addition to socio-demographic context factors such as age, educational background and migration background, we are interested in how psychological, social and societal resources can maintain and promote health, and which stressors and risk factors affect disease processes and how. The Chair of Social and Preventive Medicine was established in the summer semester of 2013.
Our research focus is on middle and old age, focusing in particular on mental health. We are investigating primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. Our intervention approaches here range from the individual level, for example through memory training and sports therapy interventions, to the care level, for example through the implementation of guidelines and complex interventions.
The central question here is how individuals, groups or systems learn and change, and how such lifelong learning can be used to promote health. In addition to methods of health care research, neuro- and psychological, psychotherapeutic methods and clinical medicine, as well as the entire spectrum of cognitive neurosciences are available to us.
In teaching, the professorship is involved in the Bachelor of Arts programs of "Sports Therapy and Prevention", Bachelor of Arts of "Sports Management", as well as the Master's program "Integrative Movement, Sports and Health Science" and the Master's/PhD program "Clinical Exercise Science". In addition to methodological competence, the focus here is on teaching mental health and psychiatry in sports and health sciences.