Since 2025, the BMFTR has been funding six joint research projects that investigate the effectiveness and conditions for success of urban development and organizational approaches to promoting healthy, ecologically sustainable, and socially equitable living conditions and lifestyles.
At the annual conference of the German Society for Social Medicine and Prevention, the BMFTR funding line for intervention studies on healthy and sustainable living conditions and lifestyles and all six joint research projects were presented in detail in three symposia and a poster exhibition.
The Department of Social Epidemiology at the Institute for Public Health and Nursing Research is coordinating the joint project “SalusTransform – Evaluation of measures for equitable health-promoting urban development and major transformation.”
Together with researchers from the Bochum University of Applied Sciences and the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, the team from the Department of Social Epidemiology is evaluating integrated urban development concepts (ISEK) for the first time in Germany in terms of their effectiveness in improving health, reducing social inequalities, and increasing ecological sustainability. To this end, the researchers are working closely with stakeholders from local government and urban districts in Bremen, Bochum, and Wuppertal.
Dr. Justus Tönnies and Prof. Dr. Gabriele Bolte presented the concept, objectives, and study design of SalusTransform in a lecture, as well as the three integrated urban development concepts in Bremen, Bochum, and Wuppertal that were selected for evaluation.
In a poster, Ellen Senck emphasized the study design of the ISEK evaluation as a quasi-experimental, non-randomized intervention study with one comparison area per city based on ISEK's program theory.
Further information on SalusTransform:
https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/salustransform
Review article „Development of a healthy city for all: joint research project SalusTransform“: https://doi.org/10.1515/pubhef-2025-0058
Review article on all six joint research projects:
