Doris Schaeffer

Doris Schaeffer is a Professor of Public Health at Bielefeld University, where she has served since 1997 and previously headed the Department of Nursing Science and Health Services Research until 2018. She is also a longstanding Fellow at the Hertie School, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration between both institutions. Her career includes roles at the Free University Berlin (Institute for Social Medicine), Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), and visiting positions at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the University of Vienna (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute).

• Education: PhD in Social Medicine from the Free University of Berlin.

Her research focuses on chronic illness management, patient-centered care, health literacy, and user involvement in healthcare. She pioneered health literacy research in Germany, co-founding the field with Professor Jürgen Pelikan. She leads the National Action Plan on Health Literacy (Nationaler Aktionsplan Gesundheitskompetenz) and co-initiated the HLS-PROF Consortium, collaborating across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. She actively contributes to the WHO’s M-POHL network as Germany’s primary investigator.

Her work bridges academic research and policy, emphasizing translational approaches to improve healthcare systems and patient outcomes.