Potsdam, 15 February 2019

A financial agreement on funding from the Brandenburg government for the new Faculty of Health Sciences was signed in Potsdam last Friday. Signatories were Prof. Edmund Neugebauer as president of the Brandenburg Medical School Theodor Fontane, MHB campus GmbH director Martin Pangritz, and the Brandenburg Minister of Science and Research Dr. Martina Münch. 1.6 million Euro per year for a total of four new professorships will go to the MHB in the coming four years.

MHB president Prof. Edmund Neugebauer was pleased to announce that four professorships for the new Faculty can now be advertised without delay.

The signing of the agreement, so Minister Münch, was the last step in establishing the joint Faculty of Health Sciences as the core element of the Brandenburg Health Campus. “One focus will be on research into diseases associated with advanced age. Another aim is the development of concepts that permit ill people to live in their own familiar surroundings as long as possible with access to appropriate care. The Brandenburg Health Campus with its network of universities, other research facilities and hospitals will be unique in Germany. It promises new chances to ensure the availability of skilled medical staff and thus of medical and nursing care in Brandenburg and serves to foster science and research in the health sector.”

The four new professorships are intended to form the basis of improved and innovative training in health science programmes, to establish care and health systems research in Brandenburg, and to set up several fields of research.

According to Neugebauer, the four professorships will address education research in health science and evidence-based teaching/learning methodology, care and health systems research, translational immunology of cardiovascular diseases, and clinical genetics. They are expected to boost and complement existing key research areas. “Medicine and health of advanced age has been identified as the main focus of the Health Campus. The topic includes research in different fields such as tissue regeneration, cardiovascular and tumour diseases and mental/neurodegenerative disorders. Key subjects will be health services research and patient-oriented basic research. Findings should bear reference to demands in the region and provide approaches for direct implementation in the practice of clinical and outpatient care.”

The three member universities – Brandenburg Medical School Theodor Fontane, University of Potsdam and Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg – had jointly founded a Faculty of Health Sciences in June 2018, having received the Brandenburg parliament’s approval on 31 May 2018. The plan is to develop new and innovative programmes to address current issues of health sciences, and also to design new service formats in the provision of medical and nursing care. During a 2-year pilot phase the focus was on a joint concept for development and personnel, combined regulations governing doctorates and post-doctoral lecturing qualifications, and a cooperative research concept. Research alliances were started to address medicine and health in advanced age. A total of 16 professorships were to be advertised, four of them for the Brandenburg Medical School.