Heide Weishaar
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 312908 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Heide Weishaar |
| PRENOMES | Heide |
| SOBRENOME | Weishaar |
| ASSINATURA | WEISHAAR H |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Robert Koch Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1150-0265 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 26 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 23 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 26 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2009 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Strengthening health system resilience during Covid-19
INTRODUCTION: 4 years after the Ebola outbreak, the arrival of COVID-19 presented West Africa with a new shock. Despite widespread disruptions, malaria service continuity remained a priority in both countries. In Sierra Leone, the proportion of pregnant women receiving at least three doses of intermittent preventive treatment increased from 36% in 2018 to 50% in 2021. Similarly, insecticide-treated net ownership in Guinea rose from 44% to 63%, re…
The malaria care cascade and factors associated with receiving a malaria test in children under 5 years of age and pregnant women with fever
INTRODUCTION: Malaria remains a significant global health issue, particularly among children under 5 years of age and pregnant women. In Guinea and Sierra Leone, malaria care in these vulnerable groups remains suboptimal and may have deteriorated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, evidence on the state of the malaria care cascade is urgently needed to guide public health interventions after the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: We conducted a cross-se…
Health service providers' views on barriers and drivers to childhood vaccination of FDMN/Rohingya refugees
Background: Despite established vaccination programs, vaccine-preventable diseases persist among about 900,000 Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDMN)/Rohingya refugees in the world's largest refugee settlement in Bangladesh. Health service providers (HSPs) play a key role in the delivery of childhood vaccination programs. This study explored their views on individual and context barriers and drivers to childhood vaccination in this setting. …
Capacity-building during public health emergencies
Introduction: Upon the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Public Health Laboratory Support Unit (ZIG4) at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German National Public Health Institute, developed and delivered an online training on SARS-CoV-2 qPCR diagnostics to 17 partner countries in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). This article analyses the usefulness and cost savings of this training. Methods: The authors performed a concurrent mixed-m…
Responding to fluctuations in public and community trust and health seeking behaviour during the Covid-19 pandemic
Lessons from the Ebola epidemic enabled response actors to consider maintaining and rebuilding trust as a core aim of the pandemic response which helped to ensure continuity of care and mitigate secondary impacts of the pandemic. Monitoring and maintaining trust in health systems is a key consideration for health systems resilience during public health emergencies
Barriers and facilitators to viral hepatitis testing in Uzbekistan
A multi-pronged approach is recommended to achieve VH testing goals among the general population, focusing on raising awareness and health literacy and creating an enabling environment that ensures easy accessibility and minimizing VH testing-associated costs
Listening to the Voices of Health Care Workers During the Covid-19 Pandemic
In their daily practice, health care workers (HCWs) experience the effects of tensions between professional ethos and work realities, which can lead to ethical dilemmas. We aim to explore the ethical dilemmas that affected HCWs in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic and to understand these in the context of the German health system. Between April and December 2022, we interviewed HCWs from various levels of care and key informants responsible fo…
Communicating risk during early phases of Covid-19
Background: Emergency risk communication (ERC) is key to achieving compliance with public health measures during pandemics. Yet, the factors that facilitated ERC during COVID-19 have not been analyzed. We compare ERC in the early stages of the pandemic across four socio-economic settings to identify how risk communication can be improved in public health emergencies (PHE). Methods: To map and assess the content, process, actors, and context of ER…
Global health in Germany
Interdisciplinarity in global health in the academic sector in Germany is limited. • Biomedical sciences dominate global health research and education in Germany. • A current open policy window could be exploited to strengthen interdisciplinarity. • Topic specific collaboration in global health may promote interdisciplinarity. • Discipline-orientated funding impedes interdisciplinarity in global health research. Global Health (GH) in Germany incr…
Providing strategic information during a public health emergency
Background: Timely strategic information is essential for decision makers to mount an effective public health response to infectious disease outbreaks, and public health actors must find an effective way to supply it. The Centre for International Health Protection at the Robert Koch Institute (Germany’s national public health institute) developed a three-pronged approach to processing and supplying strategic information on the international state…
A comparative analysis of experienced uncertainties in relation to risk communication during Covid19
BACKGROUND: During outbreaks, uncertainties experienced by affected communities can influence their compliance to government guidance on public health. Communicators and authorities are, hence, encouraged to acknowledge and address such uncertainties. However, in the midst of public health crises, it can become difficult to define and identify uncertainties that are most relevant to address. We analyzed data on COVID-19-related uncertainties from…
The case for developing a cohesive systems approach to research across unhealthy commodity industries
OBJECTIVES: Most non-communicable diseases are preventable and largely driven by the consumption of harmful products, such as tobacco, alcohol, gambling and ultra-processed food and drink products, collectively termed unhealthy commodities. This paper explores the links between unhealthy commodity industries (UCIs), analyses the extent of alignment across their corporate political strategies, and proposes a cohesive systems approach to research a…
Evidence use in E-cigarettes debates
E-cigarette debates are likely to reconcile only if a clear majority of participants in the uncertain 'middle ground' settle on a more fixed position. Our results suggest that many participants in Scottish e-cigarette debates occupy this 'middle ground' and express concerns that can be empirically assessed, implying evidence has the potential to play a more important role in settling e-cigarette debates than previous research suggests
Understanding commercial actors’ engagement in policy debates on proposed e-cigarette regulation in Scotland
Awareness of the various commercial interests and strategic positioning of commercial actors in e-cigarette policy should inform public health advocacy and policy development, including managing conflicts of interest in the context of Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Article 5.3
Assessing Covid-19 through the lens of health systems’ preparedness
The last months have left no-one in doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic is exerting enormous pressure on health systems around the world, bringing to light the sub-optimal resilience of even those classified as high-performing. This makes us re-think the extent to which we are using the appropriate metrics in evaluating health systems which, in the case of this pandemic, might have masked how unprepared some countries were. It also makes us reflect …
E-Cigarettes
Concerns have been raised that the divisions emerging within public health in response to electronic cigarettes are weakening tobacco control. This paper employed thematic and network analysis to assess 90 policy consultation submissions and 18 interviews with political actors to examine the extent of, and basis for, divisions between health-focused actors with regard to the harms and benefits of e-cigarettes and appropriate approaches to regulat…
Networks, advocacy and evidence in public health policymaking
The past two decades witnessed the international consensus around the idea that health policy decisions should be ‘evidence-based’. These efforts have stimulated a wealth of studies explicitly concerned with understanding the use of research evidence in policy. The majority of such studies suggest there are few examples of public health policy outcomes that might reasonably be labelled ‘evidence-based’. Only a small number of these studies seek t…
Nothing can be done until everything is done’
BACKGROUND: Corporations use a range of strategies to dispute their role in causing public health harms and to limit the scope of effective public health interventions. This is well documented in relation to the activities of the tobacco industry, but research on other industries is less well developed. We therefore analysed public statements and documents from four unhealthy commodity industries to investigate whether and how they used arguments…
Vulnerable children, stigmatised smokers
Following restrictions on smoking in vehicles carrying children in several countries, legislation to safeguard minors from second-hand smoke exposure in vehicles is under-consideration or has been implemented across the United Kingdom. This article presents the first investigation into social constructions of children, smokers and smoking parents in newsprint media and coverage of debates about protecting children from exposure to second-hand smo…
Unpacking commercial sector opposition to European smoke-free policy
The comparatively limited opposition to EU smoke-free policy contrasts with previous accounts of tobacco industry resistance to tobacco control. While context-specific factors can partially explain these differences, the paper indicates that the sector's diminished credibility and lack of unity hampered political engagement and alliance building. Industry efforts to emphasise the benefits of smokeless tobacco during smoke-free policy debates high…
Best of enemies
Capturing complexity
Social network analysis (SNA), a method which can be used to explore networks in various contexts, has received increasing attention. Drawing on the development of European smoke-free policy, this paper explores how a mixed method approach to SNA can be utilised to investigate a complex policy network. Textual data from public documents, consultation submissions and websites were extracted, converted and analysed using plagiarism detection softwa…
Tobacco industry attempts to influence and use the German government to undermine the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
The evidence suggests that Germany played a major role in the tobacco industry's efforts to undermine the FCTC. Germany's position consistently served to protect industry interests and was used to influence and constrain other countries. Germany thus contributed significantly to attempts to weaken an international treaty and, in doing so, failed in its responsibility to advance global health
You have to be flexible”—Coping among polish migrant workers in Scotland
Is the increasing policy use of Impact Assessment in Europe likely to undermine efforts to achieve healthy public policy
European policymakers have recently become increasingly committed to using Impact Assessment (IA) to inform policy decisions. Welcoming this development, the public health community has not yet paid sufficient attention to conceptual concerns about IA or to corporate efforts to shape the way in which IA is used. This essay is a thematic analysis of literature concerning IA and associated tools and a related assessment of the European Union's (EU)…
Best of enemies
Capturing complexity
Social network analysis (SNA), a method which can be used to explore networks in various contexts, has received increasing attention. Drawing on the development of European smoke-free policy, this paper explores how a mixed method approach to SNA can be utilised to investigate a complex policy network. Textual data from public documents, consultation submissions and websites were extracted, converted and analysed using plagiarism detection softwa…
You have to be flexible”—Coping among polish migrant workers in Scotland
Is the increasing policy use of Impact Assessment in Europe likely to undermine efforts to achieve healthy public policy
European policymakers have recently become increasingly committed to using Impact Assessment (IA) to inform policy decisions. Welcoming this development, the public health community has not yet paid sufficient attention to conceptual concerns about IA or to corporate efforts to shape the way in which IA is used. This essay is a thematic analysis of literature concerning IA and associated tools and a related assessment of the European Union's (EU)…
Networks, advocacy and evidence in public health policymaking
The past two decades witnessed the international consensus around the idea that health policy decisions should be ‘evidence-based’. These efforts have stimulated a wealth of studies explicitly concerned with understanding the use of research evidence in policy. The majority of such studies suggest there are few examples of public health policy outcomes that might reasonably be labelled ‘evidence-based’. Only a small number of these studies seek t…
Nothing can be done until everything is done’
BACKGROUND: Corporations use a range of strategies to dispute their role in causing public health harms and to limit the scope of effective public health interventions. This is well documented in relation to the activities of the tobacco industry, but research on other industries is less well developed. We therefore analysed public statements and documents from four unhealthy commodity industries to investigate whether and how they used arguments…
Listening to the Voices of Health Care Workers During the Covid-19 Pandemic
In their daily practice, health care workers (HCWs) experience the effects of tensions between professional ethos and work realities, which can lead to ethical dilemmas. We aim to explore the ethical dilemmas that affected HCWs in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic and to understand these in the context of the German health system. Between April and December 2022, we interviewed HCWs from various levels of care and key informants responsible fo…
Tobacco industry attempts to undermine Article 5.3 and the “good governance” trap
No abstract available
You have to be flexible”—Coping among polish migrant workers in Scotland
Is the increasing policy use of Impact Assessment in Europe likely to undermine efforts to achieve healthy public policy
European policymakers have recently become increasingly committed to using Impact Assessment (IA) to inform policy decisions. Welcoming this development, the public health community has not yet paid sufficient attention to conceptual concerns about IA or to corporate efforts to shape the way in which IA is used. This essay is a thematic analysis of literature concerning IA and associated tools and a related assessment of the European Union's (EU)…
Tobacco industry attempts to influence and use the German government to undermine the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
The evidence suggests that Germany played a major role in the tobacco industry's efforts to undermine the FCTC. Germany's position consistently served to protect industry interests and was used to influence and constrain other countries. Germany thus contributed significantly to attempts to weaken an international treaty and, in doing so, failed in its responsibility to advance global health
Capturing complexity
Social network analysis (SNA), a method which can be used to explore networks in various contexts, has received increasing attention. Drawing on the development of European smoke-free policy, this paper explores how a mixed method approach to SNA can be utilised to investigate a complex policy network. Textual data from public documents, consultation submissions and websites were extracted, converted and analysed using plagiarism detection softwa…
Unpacking commercial sector opposition to European smoke-free policy
The comparatively limited opposition to EU smoke-free policy contrasts with previous accounts of tobacco industry resistance to tobacco control. While context-specific factors can partially explain these differences, the paper indicates that the sector's diminished credibility and lack of unity hampered political engagement and alliance building. Industry efforts to emphasise the benefits of smokeless tobacco during smoke-free policy debates high…
Best of enemies
Nothing can be done until everything is done’
BACKGROUND: Corporations use a range of strategies to dispute their role in causing public health harms and to limit the scope of effective public health interventions. This is well documented in relation to the activities of the tobacco industry, but research on other industries is less well developed. We therefore analysed public statements and documents from four unhealthy commodity industries to investigate whether and how they used arguments…
Vulnerable children, stigmatised smokers
Following restrictions on smoking in vehicles carrying children in several countries, legislation to safeguard minors from second-hand smoke exposure in vehicles is under-consideration or has been implemented across the United Kingdom. This article presents the first investigation into social constructions of children, smokers and smoking parents in newsprint media and coverage of debates about protecting children from exposure to second-hand smo…
Networks, advocacy and evidence in public health policymaking
The past two decades witnessed the international consensus around the idea that health policy decisions should be ‘evidence-based’. These efforts have stimulated a wealth of studies explicitly concerned with understanding the use of research evidence in policy. The majority of such studies suggest there are few examples of public health policy outcomes that might reasonably be labelled ‘evidence-based’. Only a small number of these studies seek t…
E-Cigarettes
Concerns have been raised that the divisions emerging within public health in response to electronic cigarettes are weakening tobacco control. This paper employed thematic and network analysis to assess 90 policy consultation submissions and 18 interviews with political actors to examine the extent of, and basis for, divisions between health-focused actors with regard to the harms and benefits of e-cigarettes and appropriate approaches to regulat…
Assessing Covid-19 through the lens of health systems’ preparedness
The last months have left no-one in doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic is exerting enormous pressure on health systems around the world, bringing to light the sub-optimal resilience of even those classified as high-performing. This makes us re-think the extent to which we are using the appropriate metrics in evaluating health systems which, in the case of this pandemic, might have masked how unprepared some countries were. It also makes us reflect …
The case for developing a cohesive systems approach to research across unhealthy commodity industries
OBJECTIVES: Most non-communicable diseases are preventable and largely driven by the consumption of harmful products, such as tobacco, alcohol, gambling and ultra-processed food and drink products, collectively termed unhealthy commodities. This paper explores the links between unhealthy commodity industries (UCIs), analyses the extent of alignment across their corporate political strategies, and proposes a cohesive systems approach to research a…
Evidence use in E-cigarettes debates
E-cigarette debates are likely to reconcile only if a clear majority of participants in the uncertain 'middle ground' settle on a more fixed position. Our results suggest that many participants in Scottish e-cigarette debates occupy this 'middle ground' and express concerns that can be empirically assessed, implying evidence has the potential to play a more important role in settling e-cigarette debates than previous research suggests
Understanding commercial actors’ engagement in policy debates on proposed e-cigarette regulation in Scotland
Awareness of the various commercial interests and strategic positioning of commercial actors in e-cigarette policy should inform public health advocacy and policy development, including managing conflicts of interest in the context of Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Article 5.3
A comparative analysis of experienced uncertainties in relation to risk communication during Covid19
BACKGROUND: During outbreaks, uncertainties experienced by affected communities can influence their compliance to government guidance on public health. Communicators and authorities are, hence, encouraged to acknowledge and address such uncertainties. However, in the midst of public health crises, it can become difficult to define and identify uncertainties that are most relevant to address. We analyzed data on COVID-19-related uncertainties from…
Communicating risk during early phases of Covid-19
Background: Emergency risk communication (ERC) is key to achieving compliance with public health measures during pandemics. Yet, the factors that facilitated ERC during COVID-19 have not been analyzed. We compare ERC in the early stages of the pandemic across four socio-economic settings to identify how risk communication can be improved in public health emergencies (PHE). Methods: To map and assess the content, process, actors, and context of ER…
Global health in Germany
Interdisciplinarity in global health in the academic sector in Germany is limited. • Biomedical sciences dominate global health research and education in Germany. • A current open policy window could be exploited to strengthen interdisciplinarity. • Topic specific collaboration in global health may promote interdisciplinarity. • Discipline-orientated funding impedes interdisciplinarity in global health research. Global Health (GH) in Germany incr…
Providing strategic information during a public health emergency
Background: Timely strategic information is essential for decision makers to mount an effective public health response to infectious disease outbreaks, and public health actors must find an effective way to supply it. The Centre for International Health Protection at the Robert Koch Institute (Germany’s national public health institute) developed a three-pronged approach to processing and supplying strategic information on the international state…
Health service providers' views on barriers and drivers to childhood vaccination of FDMN/Rohingya refugees
Background: Despite established vaccination programs, vaccine-preventable diseases persist among about 900,000 Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDMN)/Rohingya refugees in the world's largest refugee settlement in Bangladesh. Health service providers (HSPs) play a key role in the delivery of childhood vaccination programs. This study explored their views on individual and context barriers and drivers to childhood vaccination in this setting. …
Capacity-building during public health emergencies
Introduction: Upon the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Public Health Laboratory Support Unit (ZIG4) at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German National Public Health Institute, developed and delivered an online training on SARS-CoV-2 qPCR diagnostics to 17 partner countries in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). This article analyses the usefulness and cost savings of this training. Methods: The authors performed a concurrent mixed-m…
Responding to fluctuations in public and community trust and health seeking behaviour during the Covid-19 pandemic
Lessons from the Ebola epidemic enabled response actors to consider maintaining and rebuilding trust as a core aim of the pandemic response which helped to ensure continuity of care and mitigate secondary impacts of the pandemic. Monitoring and maintaining trust in health systems is a key consideration for health systems resilience during public health emergencies
Barriers and facilitators to viral hepatitis testing in Uzbekistan
A multi-pronged approach is recommended to achieve VH testing goals among the general population, focusing on raising awareness and health literacy and creating an enabling environment that ensures easy accessibility and minimizing VH testing-associated costs
Listening to the Voices of Health Care Workers During the Covid-19 Pandemic
In their daily practice, health care workers (HCWs) experience the effects of tensions between professional ethos and work realities, which can lead to ethical dilemmas. We aim to explore the ethical dilemmas that affected HCWs in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic and to understand these in the context of the German health system. Between April and December 2022, we interviewed HCWs from various levels of care and key informants responsible fo…
Strengthening health system resilience during Covid-19
INTRODUCTION: 4 years after the Ebola outbreak, the arrival of COVID-19 presented West Africa with a new shock. Despite widespread disruptions, malaria service continuity remained a priority in both countries. In Sierra Leone, the proportion of pregnant women receiving at least three doses of intermittent preventive treatment increased from 36% in 2018 to 50% in 2021. Similarly, insecticide-treated net ownership in Guinea rose from 44% to 63%, re…
Medicine (21 obras) · Political science (20 obras) · Public health (18 obras) · Business (13 obras) · Public relations (13 obras) · Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology (12 obras) · Law (12 obras) · Sociology (11 obras) · Nursing (9 obras) · Qualitative research (9 obras)