Health Service Research in care of very-low-birth-weight-

Health Literacy

Health Service Research in care of very-low-birth-weight-infants in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) - The impact of human resources, capacity, workload quality, costs and ethics (HSR-NICU)

Duration : 2012 – 2015

Project Board

Prof. Dr. Ludwig Kuntz

Project Team

Prof. Dr. Holger Pfaff
Prof. Dr. med. Dipl.-Kfm. Rainer Riedel (Rheinische Fachhochschule Cologne (RFH))
Prof. Dr. med. Bernhard Roth
Prof. Dr. med. Christiane Woopen

Funding Institution: BMBF

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Project Objectives

The care for infants with a very low birth weight below 1.500g entails a variety of medical, ethical, economical and managerial challenges.

The aim of the interdisciplinary study “Health Services Research in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (HRS-NICU)“ is to identify medical and non-medical determinants which influence the quality of care for preterm infants.

Four sub-projects analyze the medical, ethical, economical and managerial aspects of care in 69 German neonatal intensive care units (Level I and II). Assessing the results will contribute substantially to further developing concepts for patient-focused organization of care. The subproject ethics aims to develop recommendations to improve parents’ health literacy during and after the hospital stay of their child.