Research gaps
Research on the influence of living environments on health is often limited. This is due to biases because some people are more likely to migrate than others (selection bias) and choose where they live, which means that the characteristics of the population in one place of residence differ systematically from other places of residence (composition bias). These factors make it difficult to establish clear cause-and-effect relationships between context and health.
Causal interactions and data linkage
The quasi-random distribution of resettlement refugees in Germany at national and subnational level and the availability of routine and official data before and after their arrival are special features of the resettlement process that enable an experimental study design in INTER.SECT. These circumstances and data linkage allow causal relationships between context and health to be investigated using the example of migration trajectories in the resettlement context.
Aim
INTER.SECT investigates the effects of different social, economic and political contexts on human health and mortality at the small-scale level. In addition, innovative methods for data linkage and distributed computation techniques are evaluated and developed.
Partners
INTER.SECT is led by Prof. Dr. Kayvan Bozorgmehr (Faculty of Health Sciences, Bielefeld University) and funded by the European Research Council (ERC) as a Consolidator Grant Project (Grant number: ERC-2023-CoG 101124992). The project is carried out in cooperation with national and international actors from politics, law, civil society and multilateral organizations. Central partners are the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Research Data Centre of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF-FDZ) and the Technology and Methods Platform for Networked Medical Research (TMF e.V.).