Birgit Schauer

I am a trained veterinarian who is specialized in epidemiology with focus on zoonotic diseases (avian influenza, hepatitis E) and One Health. After ten years of overseas postgraduate training and work (New Zealand, Vietnam), I first worked at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Island of Riems (02/2013 – 10/2015) and then at the University Medicine Greifswald with the Study of Health in Pomerania. Currently I am coordinating two projects, both of which allow me to put the concepts of One Health and Responsible Research and Innovation into practice to attain better health for the communities of our study regions and beyond.

In JoinUs4Health, I am project coordinator and leader of work packages 3 (Technical implementation) and 7 (Management, monitoring and evaluation).

The key question for me is whether we can generate sufficient momentum with this crowd-based approach to allow interactions to run and benefits for society to emerge sustainably over time. The underlying concept has evolved since 2016 in cooperation with the Akademie für Öffentliches Gesundheitswesen. Our aim was to help “bridge the gap between science and public health”. Now we can put the concept fully into practice for the first time – in three cohort study regions. Hence, JoinUs4Health enhances the potential of the concept for science and society in many ways.