Germany
Giessen
The Northern District (Nordstadt) is located directly north of and adjacent to the city center of Giessen. With a population of 10,500, it is one of the largest districts in the city, which has a total population of 93,000. Structurally completed in 1970, Nordstadt is one of the city’s youngest districts and is primarily composed of block buildings. The district is known for its multicultural residents, poor housing conditions, low-income levels, and high unemployment rates. Approximately a quarter of its population receives state benefits, 22.6 percent are long-term unemployed, and 37.3 percent of young people live in poverty. The housing situation is characterized by cramped living conditions, issues such as mold, and a general lack of adequate housing.
Social inequality is evident in various aspects, including access to resources, and political participation. There is neither a general practitioner nor a pharmacy, but one pediatrician. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these issues, increasing isolation and restricting access to public spaces and social services. The project aims to find out how these individuals coped with the pandemic. Therefore, locals are trained as community researchers (‘Stadtteilforscher*innen’) to conduct interviews with residents and gather their experiences. Subsequently, interviews with institutional representatives are conducted jointly by community researchers and university researchers. This collaborative knowledge production is an attempt at a decolonial approach. Strong ties with local stakeholders, including a general practitioner and the local NGO (Nordstadtzentrum), support the process. The research findings and recommendations are intended to be fed back into local networks, communities, and urban policy.
Bochum
The SMAPL project in Bochum, part of a comparative case study with Giessen, examines local responses to pandemic-related challenges in the context of social inequalities and migrant needs. Bochum is located in the Ruhr Valley, a historically significant region for mining, steel, and manufacturing, still marked by social and economic inequalities today. The studied neighborhood, Bochum-Hustadt, is characterized by low socioeconomic status and a predominantly immigrant population, which experienced high COVID-19 infection rates during the pandemic. Despite these challenges, there is a high level of civil society engagement. Efforts have primarily focused on vaccine access, with the City Lab, established in 2015 at Bochum University of Applied Sciences, playing a central role. This “community researchers” model promotes collaboration and knowledge transfer between various communities and local and regional health authorities.
As part of the SMAPL project, the City Lab aims for social and cultural mediation and works to dispel prejudices among health professionals and public administration staff who mistakenly assume high vaccine hesitancy among migrants. These efforts have shown that vaccine hesitancy among migrants is no higher than in the general German population. The City Lab has successfully advocated for and conducted a community-based vaccination campaign. Within the SMAPL project, researchers and activists from Giessen and Bochum engage in mutual learning, with Giessen exploring the application of the City Lab approach and Bochum examining the challenges and opportunities of partnerships between civil society organizations. This collaboration highlights how communities, activists, and policymakers negotiate over resources, agendas, and their space, both literally and figuratively.
First results: Between September 2021 and July 2022 the Bochum team in co-production with ten community researchers from Syria, Irak, Somalia and Germany and four academicians from the universities of Bochum, Münster and Gießen has conducted research about community and stakeholder perspectives on the pandemic resulting in 19 community interviews, 8 community media projects and 13 stakeholder interviews. Results were presented and discussed during a town hall meeting in July 2024 that took place at the university of Applied Health Sciences Bochum. The 30 participants of the THM were representatives from the health system, from local and regional political parties, from the city of Bochum, academic institutions as well as interviewed stakeholders and community members.
One of the key outcomes of the town hall meeting was the recognition that housing and living conditions rather than individual behaviour caused high COV-19 mortality and incidences in neighbourhoods affected by poverty and population density. Results from the working groups organised during the THM came up with a general recognition of the importance of CBH for dealing with future pandemics and general healthcare provision in poor neighbourhoods. The need for multi-professional district health centres in close cooperation with community actors was formulated as a political goal resulting from both the pandemic experience as well as the SMAPL research. Representatives of the health department of the city of Bochum argued that such projects should be financed from prevention funding.