[Development of Social Medicine and Public Health in Germany]

Social medicine in Germany has multiple lines of tradition, which are marked by the presence of 2 German states and their re-unification and by the (re-)establishment of multidisciplinary public health by the end of the twentieth century. At the same time, a differentiation within the applied fields of social medicine into several thematic topics can be observed. These can be grouped in a first step into the domains of clinical social medicine, of social medicine for social insurance purposes and of a population-oriented social medicine. For social medicine as a scientific discipline within the broad context of medicine, the requirement of a context-adequate development, which encompasses the special methods of multidisciplinary public health, poses big challenges. For successfully meeting these challenges and going beyond population-oriented public health and for bridging the gap between the individual and the social medical institutions of the health system, it is indispensable for social medicine to be independent of other disciplines within the array of medical specialties. The present study argues for strengthening social medicine within the medical faculties. Chairs for social medicine and public health are not only in the interest of the applied fields of social medicine, but represent also an indispensable scientific discipline which can relate and contribute to all specialties of medicine.