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Research group:
Non-communicable diseases
& aging populations
Project team:
Heribert Ramroth (head), Heiko Becher, Irene
Santi, Elisabeth Rudolph, Sami Chenouda
External Collaboration:
International Agency for Research on Cancer
(IARC), Lyon France; International Head And
Neck Cancer Consortium (INHANCE), Utah USA
The research group focuses on behavioural
and occupational risk factors for laryngeal
cancer, as well as survival rates. Starting
point for this project was a case-control
study, while analyses focusing on survi-
val resulted from a subsequent enlarged
cohort study. Two university hospitals and
three medical hospitals of three different
German federal states participated in this
study, resulting in a final sample of 257
cases and 769 controls, 1:3 frequency-
matched for sex and age. The subsequent
cohort study included all patients from the
case-control study but was increased to
include all cases in the same study region
as in the case-control study up to the end
of the year 2004. To date, patients from
four clinics could be recruited, resulting
in a final cohort of 594 laryngeal cancer
patients.
Perspectives of the group:
The study team is currently applying a
recently developed occupational index
to differentiate between educational and
occupational effects for this cancer. This
seems to be especially important for better
distinguishing between various confoun-
ding variables. Recent survival analyses
considering the effect of lifestyle factors are
planned to be applied to a cohort of head
and neck cancer patients collected by the
INHANCE working group in cooperation with
the International Agency for Research on
Cancer (IARC), France.
Research group: Maternal and
child health epidemiology
Project team:
Sabine Gabrysch (head), Robin Nesbitt,
Heiko Becher, Terhi Lohela, Nicholas Kyei,
Anja Schoeps
External collaborators:
Oona Campbell, Betty Kirkwood, Alex Manu,
Lisa Hurt and others at the London School
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Kintampo
Health Research Centre in Ghana; Centre de
Recherche en Santé Nouna in Burkina Faso;
Philipp Zanger at the Institute of Tropical
Medicine Tübingen, amongst others.
Funding:
Rahel Goitein-Straus fellowship from the
Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University,
Postdoctoral fellowship of the Baden-Würt-
temberg Foundation.
We investigate how geographic accessibility
of health facilities and quality of care at faci-
lities influence use of delivery care, antena-
tal care, maternal and newborn mortality in
Sub-Saharan African countries.
In Zambia and Malawi, we could take advan-
tage of existing geo-referenced national
health facility census data and household
data from demographic and health surveys,
linking these in a Geographic Information
System (GIS). In Burkina Faso and in Ghana,
we use data from our partner institutions’
demographic surveillance systems. In
Ghana, together with our collaborators, we
surveyed 86 health facilities in 2010 and are
currently studying the influence of distance
and quality of maternal and newborn care at
delivery facilities on maternal mortality as
well as on delivery care-seeking in emer-
gency situations and for planned facility
deliveries.
We have furthermore reviewed current
health-system output indicators and bench-
marks proposed by the WHO and other UN
agencies and made suggestions on how to
make them consistent and more practically
useful.
From 2013 on for six years, the BMBF will
fund a junior scientist group in epidemiolo-
gy at the institute, which will be led by
Dr. Sabine Gabrysch. The group will conduct
a cluster-randomised trial of an integrated
agricultural project with women’s groups
aimed at reducing undernutrition in young
children.