Group | Household Health Systems

The Household Health Systems research group focuses on in environmental health and health systems research. We consider the perspective of the household at the interface to the health and social system in socio-ecological environments in the global South and North. The intention is to discover how household health practices and behaviours can be better integrated with formal public services and become integral and supported parts of the health system and programme.    

Research in the South

In the context of the South, the purpose of our research in two South American and five African countries is to link marginalised and rural (high altitude) communities with an effective higher-level health system by improved engagement of householders and community level health workers. The intention is to discover how household health practices and behaviours but also environmental and health intervention can be better integrated with formal public services and become integral and supported parts of the health system and programmes.

In the Swiss context, we investigate processes that link human behaviour, illness experience, and health seeking on the one hand and the physicians’ behaviour, case management, and diagnostic and treatment strategies as well as the diagnostic practices of laboratories on the other hand; all those factors are influencing disease reporting and shape the so-called “burden of illness pyramid”. Our research on food- and waterborne disease epidemiology and control including on acute gastroenteritis, campylobacteriosis and Legionnaires’ disease fosters the understanding of the aforementioned processes.

We apply this model to depict our multiple research projects in the field health systems research on infectious diseases in Switzerland.