The project experts of lived experience has started on January 1st, 2026, within the Department of Social Epidemiology at the Institute for Public Health (IPP) in cooperation with the Bochum University of Applied Sciences. This interdisciplinary project tests the approach of experts by lived experience in urban health within the InnovationsCommunity Urban Health (ICUH). The project is being funded by the Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) for three years as part of DATIpilot. In the old industrial urban regions of the Ruhr and Bremen/Bremerhaven, research is to be conducted into how a socio-ecological transformation can succeed and how healthy and equitable living conditions can be created in cities.
Inner-city neighborhoods in old industrial areas that are affected by environmental injustice face a variety of challenges. Unequal health opportunities, poor environmental quality and a lack of social participation often manifest themselves there. At the same time, such areas offer points of contact and specific experience in neighborhood development. The central subject of the InnovationCommunity Urban Health is overcoming the “implementation gap”, i.e. the question of why scientific findings and accepted guiding principles such as sustainability, environmental justice or health-promoting urban development often cannot be implemented in practice. The new interdisciplinary project aims to involve people from different communities with implicit knowledge in research, practice, and education to develop context-specific solutions for equitable, health-promoting urban development. Within the Department of Social Epidemiology at IPP, Jana Purnhagen and Prof. Dr. Gabriele Bolte focus on the development, testing, and evaluation of a concept for evaluating co-design processes involving experts of lived experience.
Further information on ICUH projects can be found at:
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Bolte
Institute for Public Health and Nursing Research
Department of Social Epidemiology
E-mail: gabriele.bolte@uni-bremen.de
