UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

Profile

After studying social and administrative sciences at the Universities of Erlangen-Nuremberg and Constance and a study visit to the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor/USA), Prof. Pfaff first worked as a research assistant at the University of Oldenburg and as a university assistant at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1995, he completed his habilitation in sociology. This was followed by a visiting professorship in the subject of "Sociology of Technology and Industry" at the TU Berlin. In 1997 he took over the professorship for "Medical Sociology" at the University of Cologne.

Since 2002, Prof. Pfaff has been spokesman of the Center for Health Services Research Cologne (ZVFK) and, since 2009, managing director of the ZVFK; a cross-faculty institution of the Faculty of Human Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Cologne.

He was chairman of the German Society for Medical Sociology (DGMS) from 2002 to 2010 and spokesman of the Clearinghouse for Health Services Research NRW from 2004 to 2009.

From 2006 to 2011 he was first chairman and from 2012 to 2014 vice chairman of the German Network for Health Services Research (DNVF). He has been a member of the DNVF board since 2014.

He has been director of the Institute for Medical Sociology, Health Services Research and Rehabilitation Science (IMVR) at the University of Cologne since 2009. This bridge institute is a joint institution of the Faculty of Human Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine. Since 2009, he has held the bridge professorship "Quality Development and Evaluation in Rehabilitation", responsible for the teaching areas "Medical Sociology" (Faculty of Medicine) and "Quality Development in Rehabilitation" in (Faculty of Human Sciences).

He was Visiting Scholar and Executive in Residence at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2011, and Visiting Researcher at the Department of Sociology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.

Prof. Pfaff has been an elected fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 2013 and is a member of Section 4 "Genetic, Metabolic and Regualtory Basis of Diseases and Public Health" of Review Board 205 "Medicine" of the German Research Foundation. In autumn 2015, he was elected as a fellow for another 4 years.

In 2014 and 2015, Prof. Pfaff was on several research visits as Visiting Research Fellow at the Health Services Research Unit of the University of Aberdeen. His European Visiting Research Fellowship was funded by the Royal Society of Aberdeen. since 2015 he is Honorary Senior Research Fellow of HRSU at the University of Aberdeen.

In January 2016, Prof. Pfaff was appointed Chairman of the Expert Advisory Board Innovation Fund by the German Federal Minister Hermann Gröhe. The Expert Advisory Board is tasked with developing recommendations on the content of funding announcements, reviewing applications for funding, and preparing recommendations for funding decisions.

Since 2018, Prof. Pfaff has held an honorary professorship at Macquarie University in Sydney.

Research fields

Prof. Pfaff’s research focuses on three interconnected areas: health services research, social epidemiology (sociology of health), and healthcare system design. Health services research centers on the analysis of the health services and healthcare system. The effectiveness of this system is measured by how well it contributes to healing, prolongs life, and/or improves the quality of life; therefore, it is important to determine to what degree the healthcare and health services system (health services structures and processes, health organizations) can contribute to these outcomes. These topics are relevant to social epidemiology and health services epidemiology and are therefore also an important part of the sociology of health. The third area of focus concerns the practical implementation of insights from health services research and social epidemiology. It centers on how interventions in healthcare organizations and healthcare networks (e.g., integrated health services) must be planned and designed to achieve a change in behavior of the stakeholders (e.g., physicians and patients) and an improvement in system outcomes (life expectancy, quality of life, patient satisfaction).

Focus area I: Health services research

• Theoretical and methodological foundations of health services research
• Sociology of the health services and healthcare system (organizational sociological and medical sociological foundations of health services research)
• Physician-patient interaction: dimensions, causes, consequences
• Health services structures and processes: design, determinants, impacts
• Healthcare organizations: characteristics and effects on health
• Behavior in the healthcare system: phenomena, determinants, consequences

Focus area II: Social and health services epidemiology

• Sociological foundations of epidemiology (sociology of health)
• Health services epidemiology (effects of health services structures and processes, organizational structures, and health technologies on health)
• Work and health (effects of work life on health)

Focus area III: Social system design and interventions

• Theoretical and methodological foundations of system design and intervention
• Health services and health system design
• Workplace health management, workplace health promotion and prevention
• Influencing the behavior of patients, staff, and stakeholders in the healthcare system