Magdeburg (FME) – First studies show that social factors such as education level, income and Assets, profession, living environment, or the use of health services in the COVID-19 pandemic, the risk of infection and the course of a COVID-say 19 disease. In the scientific network MethodCOV the Expertise of the University clinics is to be bundled with social and contextual factors in the area of pandemic research and linked to each other. The University medical center Magdeburg is under the direction of Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Apfelbacher, Director of the Institute for social medicine and health system research (ISMG) of the Medical faculty of the Otto-von-Guericke-University, Magdeburg, Germany Partner in this network of 37 research institutes from 24 University of medications. The goal is to let the knowledge into new approaches to Prevention and clinical therapy concepts and to the protection of particularly vulnerable population groups.

"The current development of the COVID-19-pandemic clearly shows us that now is TRANS-disciplinary solutions are needed to protect particularly vulnerable groups of the population even better. In the past few weeks and months of important biomedical knowledge could be obtained, which help to understand the SARS-CoV-2 Virus and the disease better and also to deal with the symptoms better. With MethodCOV also the social factors are increasingly in the gaze of science and the future, as in the case of preventive measures and therapy approaches into account,“ explains Prof. Apfelbacher.

To do this, the health expert and his Team are working in Magdeburg than a total of seven working groups on the development of a scientific Expert network. The Magdeburg researchers*act as interface. This should, in future, create a shortcut to the already existing network of competence of Public Health – a consortium of more than 25 scientific societies in the area of Public Health to Covid-19. The entire research project MethodCOV is managed by the University clinic Düsseldorf. The new method supports network COVID-19-studies in the collection and analysis of data related to the topics of socio-demographics, occupational factors, environmental factors, and supply-related factors. The network provides scientific tools that can be used by the individual COVID-19-research projects within the National network, the University of medications (NUM).

A group of medical historians and ethicists*provides inner in addition to orientation knowledge for the future and leads to the already since the beginning of the pandemic led to the Right and value debates. In the long term, a sustained interactive network to link the pandemic, research on social and contextual factors should be established and should remain even after the COVID-19-pandemic of existence.

The project "MethodCOV" is under the full title "method and network for support from Covid-19 research projects in the measurement of social and contextual factors," with approximately 140,000 Euro in the framework of the National research network of the University medical center (NUM) to Covid-19 by the German Federal Ministry for education and research (BMBF).

*The contribution "Particularly at risk: The influence of social and cultural factors on the Corona-pandemic" is published by Lady.Health. Contact with the executives here.