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Welcome
to our institute, it’s staff, students and
partners worldwide. The Heidelberg Institute
of Public Health (HIPH) celebrates its 50th
jubilee anniversary this year. As the biennial
report covers only the period of 2010/11, let
me take this opportunity to briefly sketch
our history.
Founded in 1962 by my predecessor Helmut
Jusatz as the "health wing" of the South Asia
Institute of the University of Heidelberg, it
had a focus on medical geography. Hans
Jochen Diesfeld who followed Jusatz in 1978
brought his expertise in tropical medicine
and his interest in public health in low-
income countries to the table and renamed
the institute as "Department of Tropical
Hygiene and Public Health". In 1990, he
set up the first non-consecutive Master of
Science in a medical field in Germany. Until
today, it has remained with many improve-
ments and additions, our flagship offer in
postgraduate training.
A large federally funded research focus on
tropical medicine brought the natural (bio-
chemistry, molecular biology) and clinical
(paediatrics) sciences of the university,
clinicians and public health specialists
together and paved the foundation of a
long-term interdisciplinary cooperation
around the topic of tropical medicine
and public health in Heidelberg, with the
institute as the hub. The grant also provided
two chairs, one in parasitology and one in
tropical hygiene and public health along
with two young research groups.
In 1997, Rainer Sauerborn was hired from
Harvard University to become his succes-
sor. Under his leadership, the institute was
awarded a "Special Research Center (SFB):
Control of Tropical Infectious Diseases"
funded by the German Research Foundation
(DFG). It was in a way an extension and
intensification of the previous research
focus. It included the research groups from
the European Molecular Biology Lab (EMBL),
and the German Cancer Research Center
(DKFZ), both situated in Heidelberg. After
three successful three-year evaluations, the
SFB concluded in 2011.
In formal teaching, Heiko Becher, epidemio-
logist and deputy of the institute, set up a
doctoral school in epidemiology in 2002,
again with the institute as the hub of a uni-
versity-wide cooperation which included also
the German Cancer Research Center. An in-
ternational doctoral school (Graduiertenkol-
leg) in global health, coordinated by Rainer
Sauerborn, is currently set up. In this joint
doctoral programme the Karolinska Institute
(Stockholm) and Umeå University in Sweden
join the institute to establish an international
PhD programme in global health.
The master level training program was
expanded, modularized and integrated
into the European teaching network tropEd.
It now consists of a base module of three
months and fourteen short courses from
human rights to climate change and health.
These short courses can be selected as
stand-alone units or as part of a master’s
degree both at University of Heidelberg or
any of the other 29 tropEd teaching institu-
tions across Europe.
We have founded a consultancy group
EVAluation & PLANning (EVAPLAN), which
is quite successful in running both large
implementation projects for various bi- and
multilateral donors, and individual consul-
ting mission both to governments and to aid
organizations.
Research expanded on an ever improving
track record of acquiring research grants
from the European Union, the DFG, the
Volkswagenstiftung, the Humboldt Founda-
tion, the French Climate Research Program,
the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and
several private international foundations.
A grant proposal to the Gates foundation
has been recently submitted with the IND-
EPTH network.