28. October 2022 | Seminar für Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

Field trip to Zanzibar for Health Communication Working Group

Antibiotics are an important resource for our health - the increasing development of bacterial resistance poses an ever greater threat to our health. It is therefore important to research the factors that contribute to the sensible and economical use of antibiotics in the healthcare system, in animal husbandry and in our own use. This is true everywhere in the world - and it is therefore necessary to develop psychological measurement instruments that can be used in all parts of the world and reliably indicate where there is potential for improvement.

Thus, at the end of October, Prof. Dr. Cornelia Betsch, Dr. Lars Korn, Dr. Mattis Geiger and Christopher Jäger visited future project partners in Zanzibar (Tanzania) together with colaborating partners from the Universities of Ulm (Oliver Wilhelm and Franziska Rees) and Copenhagen (Ana Santana).

Together with colleagues from the Health Improvement Project Zanzibar (HIPZ), the Zanzibar Health Research Institute (ZAHRI) and the Zanzibar Livestock Research Institute (ZALIRI), they prepared a data collection on the topic of antibiotic use and resistance formation which is planned to take place in late 2022 in Zanzibar. The data collected there will be compared with data from Germany, among other places. The partners also agreed upon a future cooperation within the framework of the replication project.

In the aid organization HIPZ, the scientists even met an alumni of the University of Erfurt: Simon Kühnert (4th from left) studied political science in Erfurt and is now Programme Director at HIPZ in Sansibar.

Through excursions to hospitals and health centers, we were able to get to know the Zanzibari health care system - through this, we gained important insights into the cultural adaptation of study material,"

says Mattis Geiger, who leads the research project in Betsch's group.

Cornelia Betsch & her team expressed their sincere thanks to HIPZ, ZAHRI and ZALIRI for the friendly and productive exchange in Zanzibar and looked forward to future intensive cooperation.

The project is currently supported by internal funding from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, where Cornelia Betsch is the head of the Health Communication Working Group since October 2021.