Institute for Biometry, Epidemiology and Information Processing

One Health

Areas of work: Zoonoses (animals as carriers), resistance, human health

Leader: Lothar Kreienbrock, Prof. Dr. rer. nat., Dipl. Stat.

Animals interact with humans and their environment in many ways, so that an extensive network of health and welfare exists in all directions of the coexistence of humans, animals and the environment.

The Institute is concerned with the elucidation and documentation of these interrelationships with the aim of developing proposals and recommendations for improving health protection.

The main focus of our investigations (research projects) is the transmission of zoonotic pathogens between humans and animals and in particular the exchange of antibiotic resistance and its causes.

The Institute is therefore designated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a "Collaborating Centre for Research and Training for Health at the Human-Animal-Environment Interface".

Animal health

Areas of work: Animal welfare, animal diseases, animal behaviour

Leader:   Amely Campe, PD Dr. med. vet., Dipl. ECVPH

The health of (farm) animals has been an important field of research at IBEI for a long time. There are a multitude of intrinsic and extrinsic factors in (farm) animal husbandry that endanger or improve animal health.

Today, we can no longer look for the one trigger for a disease. We have to deal more and more with so-called factor diseases. It also happens that one factor has a positive effect on disease A and a negative effect on disease B. Therefore, the future challenges in epidemiology lie in establishing analytical methods so that we see the world in which animals live as complex as it is.

In addition, research on animal behaviour and animal welfare has become increasingly important in recent years. In the future, not only so-called animal-related indicators must be collected, but the view must also include the people who care for the animals.

Therefore, in the "Animal Health, Animal Welfare, Animal Epidemics, Animal Welfare, Animal Diseases, Animal Behaviour" working group, we are pursuing the goal of developing a more complex understanding of interrelationships through new and further developed methods of analysis and, in doing so, also including animal keepers and veterinarians in our observations.

To this we can draw on an extensive epidemiological and statistical method portfolio and have many years of experience in planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative studies in various animal populations (research projects).