About us

Our mission

Our department contributes to the promotion of health, the prevention of disease, the protection and improvement of the quality of life of all citizens, and to the quality of care at all levels of society.
Thereby we leverage our unique combination of expertise: comprehensive primary care, health promotion, nutrition, sexual and reproductive health, midwifery, nursing, occupational health, environmental health, youth health, welfare interventions, and palliative care.
This core expertise is underpinned by a wide variety of enabling functions and capacities: health policy, epidemiology, biostatistics, qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, evidence based medicine, clinical decision making, quality indicators, monitoring and evaluation, complex interventions, health economics, health care organization and management, health informatics, health communication, cultural diversity, equity, person-centered care, patient autonomy, empowerment and ethics.
Within all our fields of expertise we provide excellent education to future and current professionals and researchers, conduct high quality research with societal relevance, and leverage our efforts by disseminating the results of research and delivering extensive service to the community.
Our added value lies in our multidisciplinary composition and in the cross-fertilization between all our core and enabling types of expertise. We moreover offer this expertise to other departments within our faculty and university, and beyond.
We reach out to all professionals (intramural and extramural) and stakeholders in the field as important partners participating in research, education, training and dissemination.

Our vision

We subscribe to the principle that health and well-being are crucial to achieving development, equity and stability throughout the world. We consider access (including financial access) to health promotion programs, disease prevention, and to appropriate programs and care services for the protection and improvement of health and quality of life as a human right.
We support the principle that investing in health is beneficial to societies overall and that health systems need to optimize the resources for the health and well-being of the population and to stimulate their appropriate use within an ethical framework based on equity, dignity, autonomy, and solidarity.
We recognize the numerous determinants of health, including social and environmental determinants, economic constraints, living conditions, demographics, behavior and lifestyles. It is thereby stressed that behavior and lifestyles are largely context-dependent and should be addressed within a multilevel framework of determinants and with interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral empowering strategies.
In line with the WHO and the OECD we recognize that comprehensive primary care is a cornerstone of sustainable health systems. Therefore, strengthening primary care systems should be a policy priority. We underline that collaboration in integrated networks between primary care professionals and thematic specialists is of utmost importance.