Objectives: Disease prevention and health promotion are among the core tasks of German public health services (Öffentlicher Gesundheitsdienst - ÖGD), particularly local public health departments (Gesundheitsämter). Little is known about the extent to which the departments were able to continue activities in the field of health promotion and prevention of non-communicable diseases (HPP-NCDs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the example of public health departments in Baden-Württemberg (BW), we therefore investigated how much staff was available to the departments for HPP-NCDs services, how much staff was actually dedicated to HPP-NCDs during the COVID-19 pandemic, which HPP-NCDs activities were carried out during the pandemic, which were cancelled, and which should be resumed as a priority, according to the public health departments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study aims to identify the distribution of the "Work-related behavior and experience patterns" (Arbeitsbezogenes Verhaltens-und Erlebnismuster, AVEM) in general practitioners and their teams by using baseline data of the IMPROVE study. Members of 60 general practices with 84 physicians in a leadership position, 28 employed physicians, and 254 practice assistants participated in a survey in 2019 and 2020. In this analysis, we focused on AVEM variables.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBundesgesundheitsblatt Gesundheitsforschung Gesundheitsschutz
January 2024
Background: Health promotion and prevention are core tasks of German public health services (Öffentlicher Gesundheitsdienst). Health communication is, among other things, central to their effectiveness. As the Internet has become an important source of health information and public health services are increasingly in the public eye, their websites are gaining more focus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLeadership has become an increasingly important issue in medicine as leadership skills, job satisfaction and patient outcomes correlate positively. Various leadership training and physician psychological well-being programmes have been developed internationally, yet no standard is established in primary care. The IMPROVEjob leadership program was developed to improve job satisfaction among German general practitioners and practice personnel.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The regional integrated health care model "Healthy Kinzigtal" started in 2006 with the goal of optimizing health care and economic efficiency. The INTEGRAL project aimed at evaluating the effect of this model on the quality of care over the first 10 years.
Methods: This methodological protocol supplements the study protocol and the main publication of the project.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
January 2022
Remaining life expectancy at age 60 (in short: RLE) is an important indicator of the health status of a population's elders. Until now, RLE has not been thoroughly investigated at the district level in Germany. In this study we analyzed, based on recent publicly available data (2015-2017), and for men and women separately, how large the RLE differences were in Germany across the 401 districts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWorkplace health management (WHM) in Germany aims at maintaining and increasing the health and well-being of employees. Little is known about company executives' attitudes toward WHM. To gain more insight, we conducted a large-scale survey in companies in the German county of Reutlingen in 2017.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: As part of the 10-year evaluation of Gesundes Kinzigtal Integrated Care (IVGK, Innovation Fund Project 01VSF16002), a multidisciplinary group of experts agreed on 101 quality indicators (QI) to evaluate the quality of regionally integrated care with its focus on health and prevention programs. One criterion was that the selected QI should in principle be suitable for mapping using routine data. The aim of the study was to investigate how many and in what way the QI developed can actually be mapped in Germany with routine data and for what reasons operationalization was restricted or not possible.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
September 2021
The overall aim of this scoping review is to outline the current state of research on health literacy (HL) in the workplace: the primary objective is to clarify the concept of individual work-related HL; the secondary aims are to report on interventions that promote individual work-related HL and to present respective measurement instruments validated to date. A high level of work-related HL could support work ability and in the longer run employability. These topics are becoming increasingly important in current circumstances and in view of ongoing developments (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The population-based integrated health care system called "Gesundes Kinzigtal" (Integrierte Versorgung Gesundes Kinzigtal, IVGK) was initiated more than 10 years ago in the Kinzig River Valley region, which is located in the Black Forest in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. IVGK is intended to optimize health care while maximizing cost-effectiveness. It consists of programs for promoting health and for enabling cooperation among service providers, as well as of a shared-savings contract that has enabled resources to be saved every year.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: In this study we examined to what extent members of a best-practice integrated healthcare model in Germany discussed their subjective future work ability with their general practitioner (GP); furthermore, we examined independent variables which explain whether future work ability is discussed.
Methods: In a cross-sectional survey, 1168 (out of 3218 invited) integrated healthcare members responded to a standardized questionnaire. This study includes n = 475 employed respondents who were at most 65 years old.
Trials
December 2020
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Currently, many countries, affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, discuss how the 'lockdown-restrictions' could be lifted to restart the economy and public life after the first wave of the COVID-19 disease has subsided. This study protocol describes an approach designed to provide an in-depth understanding of how companies and their employees in Germany deal with their working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are also interested in how and why the risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 could vary across different professional activities, company sites and regions with different epidemiological activity or infection control measures in Germany.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMore than half of the German population has difficulties in dealing with health information. It is an important task of health services research to examine how healthcare professionals and health care organizations can meet this challenge. The DNVF Memorandum Health Literacy (Part 1) defines the terms of individual and organizational health literacy, presents the national and international state of research and ethical aspects of health literacy research in health care settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMore than half of the German population has difficulties in dealing with health information. It is an important task of health services research to examine how healthcare professionals and health care organizations can meet this challenge. This short version of the DNVF Memorandum Health Literacy (Part 1) defines the terms of individual and organizational health literacy, presents the national and international state of research and ethical aspects of health literacy research in health care settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrials
June 2020
Background: Perceived high chronic stress is twice as prevalent among German general practitioners (GPs) and non-physician medical staff compared to the general population. The reasons are multi-factorial and include patient, practice, healthcare system and societal factors, such as multi-morbidity, the diversity of populations and innovations in medical care. Also, practice-related factors, like stressful patient-staff interactions, poor process management of waiting times and lack of leadership, play a role.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The project "INTEGRAL-10-year evaluation of the population-based integrated health care model 'Gesundes Kinzigtal' (Healthy Kinzigtal)" (ICM-GK) is funded by the Innovation Committee of the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) (grant no. 01VSF16002). The evaluation is to be based on a set of indicators that can be captured in routine data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLow health literacy is associated with poorer health and quality of life. An open question is whether a regional integrated healthcare system whose management strives to enable and empower its members with regard to health issues can contribute to a higher level of health literacy in the population. Against this background, in a cross-sectional study we surveyed a random selection of members of an integrated healthcare system in southwestern Germany ( = 180).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
December 2019
: The purpose of our study was to develop and psychometrically test a German-language survey instrument that measures patient enablement generically and in greater detail than previous instruments. : A multidisciplinary team developed 13 items to capture individual aspects of patient enablement (PEN-13). A pre-test with 26 subjects was followed by a random sample survey of = 1168 subjects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
July 2019
: Over recent years, the use of decision aids to promote shared decision-making have been examined. Studies on patient education and on continuing medical education for physicians are less common. This review analyzes intervention and evaluation studies on patient education and continuing medical education which aim to enhance shared decision-making.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSimilar to 'Total Worker Health' in the United States (USA), 'Workplace Health Management' in Germany is a holistic strategy to protect, promote, and manage employees' health at the workplace. It consists of four subcategories. While the subcategories 'occupational health and safety' and 'reintegration management' contain measures prescribed by law, 'workplace health promotion' and 'personnel development' can be designed more individually by the companies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Patients often experience interface problems when treated by different specialists and in different healthcare sectors. Integrated care concepts aim to reduce these problems. While most integrated healthcare models focus on individual diseases, the integrated care model 'Gesundes Kinzigtal' applies a population-based approach and addresses the full spectrum of morbidities for a population defined by area of residence-the Kinzigtal.
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