>> This means that the question “Why Halle?” is answered quickly and honestly. “Halle gave me the opportunity to implement my ideas about teaching and research and to build something fundamental,” explains Richter, who previously held an assistant professorship at the Bern Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM). He came into contact with health services research itself relatively early on during his sociology studies in Bielefeld, even though at the beginning of the 2000s there was no discipline there under the term “health services research”. However, as part of his studies, he was fortunate enough to attend various events on health policy and the social causes of health and illness, which aroused a strong interest in him. This initial interest then solidified through his work as a student assistant at the Bielefeld Faculty of Health Sciences under Professor Dr. Klaus Hurrelmann and Professor Dr. Bernhard Badura, both pioneers of health services research in Germany. Richter: “It was clear to me that I wanted to work at exactly this interface between sociology, health sciences and medicine – and in science.”
And that's in Halle, after all the largest city in Saxony-Anhalt and in 31st place among major German cities. And: There is a long tradition of social-medical and medical-sociological research here with a strong connection to health care. This was shaped from 1995 until his retirement in 2010 by Prof. Dr. who died shortly afterwards (2013). rer. soc. Wolfgang Slesina.
Richter was able and wanted to continue and expand its legacy, but also set his own impulses, as the IMS itself is a relatively young institution and only emerged from the former Section for Medical Sociology at the Institute for Medical Epidemiology, Biometry and Informatics when he took up his post in 2011 is. The institute has grown relatively quickly from its original two academic employees to currently have 15 employees, which is a great challenge and obligation for Richter.
This is particularly due to the fact that Richter has a very strong opinion about what research and teaching should look like at a university. On the one hand, as he says, he is concerned with “authenticity and fun in science”, but on the other hand, he is also very consistently concerned with the freedom and independence of university research. “Fortunately, we have now been able to set up the IMS in such a way that we have to align research more closely with our interests and less with money,” says Richter. He is therefore absolutely in line with a meta-goal of health services research: “I pursue the goal of setting my own topics and thus improving the health situation of the population.” And at the same time also having the opportunity to train students and employees*, to be able to train and employ people.
“I am glad that we can make it possible to employ doctoral students with at least 75% and post-docs with 100% – even if this involves a constant balancing act,” explains Richter. As he also admits, in the current, precarious situation facing universities, he had to “say goodbye to some visions relatively early on”. These include, for example, time for one's own research, low administrative costs and the difficulty of linking international publication activity with local care practice. It is often difficult to find an open ear for health services research.
In terms of the average age of its employees, the Haller IMS appears to be a young, uncomplicated institute whose research policy is more oriented towards basic research. Almost 70% of the IMS projects are funded by the DFG. The Halle institute is perhaps “a little more exotic than other institutions in the field” in terms of its profile and the focus of its main topics. The proportion of “classic” clinical health services research at the IMS is relatively small. In addition, questions of access and use of care services are given more focus than questions of the quality of these services.
In terms of content, the Institute of Medical Sociology focuses heavily on the social, economic and political determinants of health and health care, which are actually addressed in all IMS research projects. Although this places great emphasis on the area of health services research, it also applies to other research areas with a stronger population focus, such as life course research and child and adolescent health research. For example, the IMS leads the German part of the WHO study “Health Behavior in School-aged Children” (HBSC). Richter: “Methodologically, I am glad that we have quantitative and qualitative expertise in-house and that we carry out projects in both areas. “This orientation allows us to work on research topics using a balanced mix of different research methods.” This makes the work exciting and you have the opportunity to learn something new in every project.
Richter describes the greatest success in the short history of the IMS as the fact that the institute he leads was able to attract the first DFG research group in the field of medical sociology/health sciences, which started under his leadership in July of this year. He also sees the management of the
HBSC study is definitely an award for his team; The institute is also well placed in the intramural LOM ranking (performance-oriented allocation of funds) of the institutions in the Hall faculty and can keep up very well with scientific research. <<