Prof. Dr. Kayvan Bozorgmehr
Kayvan Bozorgmehr is full-professor in public health, head of department and vice-dean at the School of Public Health at Bielefeld University, and head of the Health Equity Studies & Migration Section at Heidelberg University Hospital. He is a medical doctor trained in social epidemiology with scientific interests in health systems, health equity, and transnational migration. He has been Principal Investigator to multiple large-scale research projects on migration and health system responses. His research is positioned at the intersection of rigorous evidence with relevance for policy and practice. His collaborations span local, national, and international civil society organizations, official authorities, including World Health Organization and the International Organization for Migration, as well as transnational professional networks. Kayvan Bozorgmehr is the Principal Investigator and grant holder in INTER.SECT, leading the project’s various streams in coordination with the other project members.
Eilin Rast
Eilin Rast is a research associate at the School of Public Health at Bielefeld University with training in social anthropology (Heidelberg University) and public health (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine). Following her engagement in research projects on refugee health at the Section Health Equity Studies & Migration at Heidelberg University Hospital, she joined the School of Public Health at Bielefeld University in 2024 while also being involved in research projects with WHO in the field of migration and health. In INTER.SECT, Eilin Rast coordinates the overarching project activities and works on concept and survey development.
Jan Oppenberg
Since 2023 Jan Oppenberg is a research associate at the School of Public Health, Bielefeld University, with educational backgrounds in physiotherapy (Bochum University of Applied Sciences) and Public Health (Bielefeld University). His research centers on applying systematic review methodologies to address policy-relevant questions across diverse domains, including the COVID-19 pandemic, pushback practices, and climate change. Additionally, he specializes in area-level data analysis, integrating multiple data sources to investigate social epidemiological research questions such as the association between socioeconomic deprivation and tuberculosis incidence. Within the INTER.SECT project, Jan Oppenberg serves as a key member of the data management and analysis team.
Ann-Kathrin Kächele
Research assistant in INTER.SECT
Dr. Marie-Christine Laible
Marie-Christine Laible is the head of the Research Data Center (BAMF-FDZ) at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). She has a Ph.D in Economics from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Marie formerly worked as a researcher with a focus on empirical labor market and personel economics, as well as migration and data managment at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). In INTER.SECT, Marie coordinates the project activities at the BAMF and works on data access and linkage.
TMF (Technology and Methods Platform for Networked Medical Research e.V.) is the non-profit umbrella organization for collaborative medical research in Germany. Founded in 2003, its aim is to develop generic solutions for legal, ethical, organisational, and technical challenges of modern collaborative medical research. TMF facilitates a systematic dialogue with experts from a wide range of disciplines in order to analyze current issues in medical research. TMF develops freely and publicly available expert opinions, guidelines, technical tools or services that have significant value for medical research networks. It thereby helps to improve the quality of research, save resources and avoid duplication. TMF has extensive expertise in the field of data protection. Its generic data protection concepts are accepted and recommended by the commissioners for data protection at federal and state level. In INTER.SECT, TMF has a leading role in defining the legal frameworks for data processing and in developing the data protection concept.
Team members:
Dr. Johannes Drepper
Karla Riesterer
Moritz Steiner
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is a related organization within the United Nations system. IOM conducts pre-migration health activities among resettlement refugees as service to member states and international agencies, thereby contributing to progress on the WHO End-TB Strategy and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As one of the key partners of INTER.SECT, the IOM team coordinates the project’s activities at the intersection of national authorities (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees – BAMF) and IOM’s pre-migration health assessment team in order to facilitate access to health-related data before resettlement to Germany.