Benjamin Schüz

Universität Bremen | Uni Bremen · Institute of Public Health and Nursing Research

Objective: Although health behavior theories assume a role of the context in health behavior self-regulation, this role is often weakly specified and rarely examined. The two studies in this article test whether properties of the environment (districts) affect if and how health-related cognitions are translated into physical activity. Methods: M...

The purpose of this study is to examine the immediate, everyday impact of health warnings on cigarette packages on potential smoking cessation mediators and to test for differences in immediate reactions to branded and plain tobacco packaging during the transition phase when plain packs where first introduced in Australia. Two Ecological Momentary...

Objective: Cancer is associated with negative health and emotional outcomes in those affected by it, suggesting the need to better understand the psychosocial determinants of illness outcomes and coping. The Common Sense Model (CSM) is the leading psychological model of self-regulation in the face of illness, and assumes that subjective illness re...

Background Socioeconomic differences in health-related behaviors are a major cause of health inequalities. However, the mechanisms (mediation/moderation) by which socioeconomic status (SES) affects health behavior are a topic of ongoing debate. Purpose Current research on SES as moderator of the health cognitions–health behavior relation is incons...

Background: Health inequalities are to a substantial degree due to socioeconomic status (SES) related differences in health behaviors such as physical activity. However, little is known about the role SES plays in the self-regulation of physical activity. Purpose: This systematic review with meta-analysis examines whether a comprehensive set of ind...

Introduction Organized breast cancer screening (BCS) programs are effective prevention measures for women aged 50-69 to prevent the sixth cause of death in Germany. It is unclear which sociodemographic factors and potential interactions are associated with never-attendance. Explorative approaches such as decision trees offer an inductive approach t...

Background Organized breast cancer screening (BCS) programs are effective measures among women aged 50-69 for preventing the fifth cause of death in Germany. However, still participation rates have not yet reached EU standards. It is unclear which and how sociodemographic factors are related to BCS attendance. This scoping review aims to identify s...

Background Organized breast cancer screening (BCS) programs are effective measures among women aged 50–69 for preventing the sixth cause of death in Germany. Although the implementation of the national screening program started in 2005, participation rates have not yet reached EU standards. It is unclear which and how sociodemographic factors are r...

Background: Digital Behavior Change Interventions (DBCIs) offer substantial potential to widely disseminate prevention and health promotion content. One key issue remains the absence of high-quality evidence of the effects of DBCIs for long-term health outcomes and unintended consequences. Here, we argue that in addition to better-quality evidence...

Background Previous studies have identified substantial regional variations in outpatient antibiotic prescribing in Germany, both in the paediatric and adult population. This indicates inappropriate antibiotic prescribing in some regions, which should be avoided to reduce antimicrobial resistance and potential side effects. The reasons for regional...

Recent studies point to the importance of the built environment for the cognitive and social health of community-dwelling people living with dementia (PlwD). One key aspect is wayfinding infrastructure, especially in urban areas. However, there are currently no clear indicators of wayfinding infrastructure or standardized assessment instruments. He...

Background Maintaining a healthy body weight and reaching long-term dietary goals requires ongoing self-monitoring and behavioral adjustments. How individuals respond to successes and failures is described in models of self-regulation: while cybernetic models propose that failures lead to increased self-regulatory efforts and successes permit a red...

Background Experiencing financial insecurity and being underserved is often associated with low health literacy, i.e., the ability to identify, obtain, interpret and act upon health information, which may result in poor health outcomes. Little is known about effective interventions for promoting health literacy among underserved populations. The ob...

Zusammenfassung Insbesondere im Kontext der COVID-19-Pandemie sind Falsch- und Desinformationen in sozialen Medien zu einer Herausforderung für effektive Public-health-Maßnahmen geworden. Hier betrachten wir Einflussfaktoren auf das Glauben und Teilen von Falschinformationen auf individueller, sozialer und situativ-kontextueller Ebene und diskutier...

Zusammenfassung Digital Public Health hat in den vergangenen Jahren insbesondere durch die mit der COVID-19-Pandemie verbundenen Anforderungen einen erheblichen Schub erfahren. In diesem Bericht geben wir einen Überblick über die Entwicklungen in der Digitalisierung im Bereich Public Health in Deutschland seit 2020 und illustrieren diese mit Beispi...

Background Breast cancer is a critical public health concern in Spain, and organized screening programs have been in place since the 1990s to reduce its incidence. However, despite the bi-annual invitation for breast cancer screening (BCS) for women aged 45–69, significant attendance inequalities persist among different population groups. This stud...

Background: Psychological views on aging are often captured by self-report quantitative questionnaires. By default, these measures base the assessment on predefined categories and focus on explicit cognitions. Digital technology, such as smartphones is always at hand in everyday life and offers options for ecological momentary assessment of views o...

Recent studies point to the importance of the built environment for the cognitive and social health of community-dwelling people living with dementia. One key aspect is wayfinding infrastructure, especially in urban areas. However, currently there are no clear indicators of wayfaring infrastructure and no standardized assessment instruments. Here,...

Background: Previous studies have identified substantial regional variations in outpatient antibiotic prescribing, both in the paediatric and adult population. This indicates inappropriate antibiotic prescribing in some regions, which should be avoided to reduce antimicrobial resistance and due to potential side effects. The reasons for regional va...

Introduction Recent studies show that low levels of health literacy are widespread in Germany, especially among socioeconomically disadvantaged groups such as long-term unemployed individuals. At the same time, it is unclear to what extent commonly used health literacy tools are tailored to the needs and literacy skills of socioeconomically disadva...

A good wayfinding infrastructure is important for people living with dementia (PlwD) as it prevents them from losing their orientation or getting lost. Ideally, it enables people with dementia to remain in their own homes for as long as possible. Recent studies do point to the importance of the built environment for the cognitive and social health...

Background: Smartphones and wearable devices with activity-tracking functions offer great opportunities to support health behavior change. However, there is a dearth of epidemiological research on consumer uptake, usage patterns, and engagement in the real world. We aim to investigate the distribution, patterns, and determinants of uptake and engag...

Background Understanding how individuals currently perceive healthy eating is essential for developing food policies and dietary recommendations that improve the health and well-being of populations. The purpose of this qualitative evidence synthesis was to systematically outline the views and understandings of healthy eating, focusing on how foods...

Background: To control infections, behavioral non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing and hygiene measures (masking, hand hygiene) were implemented widely during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, adherence to NPIs has also been implied in an increase in mental health problems. However, the designs of many existing...

Objetivos: Cumplir con las recomendaciones de comportamiento y las intervenciones no farmacológicas (NPI por sus siglas en inglés) es clave para controlar las tasas de infección por COVID-19. Sin embargo, las tasas han disminuido a nivel mundial y los determinantes potencialmente modificables de la adherencia continua y su interacción con los entor...

Purpose: Smartphones and wearable devices with activity-tracking functions offer great opportunities to support health behavior change. They can deliver evidence-based behavior change techniques and provide just-in-time adaptive interventions for physical activity. However, there is a dearth of epidemiological research on consumer usage patterns i...

Why use this framework? In order for digital public health interventions to be successfully developed, implemented and scaled up, it is curial to take interdisciplinarity and broader organizational and social contexts into account. Therefore, the Digital Public Health Framework (DigiPHrame) is a comprehensive framework that takes into account the c...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now clearly states that the existing adverse impacts of human-induced climate change on the natural world are "beyond natural climate variability" (2022). The report states that it is more likely than not that the 1.5°C global warming threshold will be reached before 2040 even in a very low green...

Background: Behavioural non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing and hygiene (masking, hand hygiene) were implemented widely during the COVID-19 pandemic to control infections. NPI adherence is crucial for effectiveness, but has also been implied in an increase in mental health problems. However, existing studies often have...

BACKGROUND Misinformation on social media is a key challenge to effective and timely public health responses. Existing mitigation measures include flagging misinformation or providing links to correct information but have not yet targeted social processes. OBJECTIVE We examine whether providing balanced social reference cues in addition to flaggin...

Background Health-related misinformation on social media is a key challenge to effective and timely public health responses. Existing mitigation measures include flagging misinformation or providing links to correct information, but they have not yet targeted social processes. Current approaches focus on increasing scrutiny, providing corrections t...

Objectives: Adherence to behavioral non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) is key to control COVID-19 infection rates. However, rates have decreased globally, and the potentially modifiable determinants of ongoing adherence and their interaction with social and physical momentary environments are still poorly understood. Here, we comprehensively e...

Purpose: Dietary behaviors differ between socio-economic groups and are one key determinant of health inequalities. Psychological factors such as attitudes are assumed to underlie the relation between inequality and dietary behaviors, but this assumption has rarely been tested empirically. We focus on a specific food group shown as detrimental to...

Background/aims Evidence points toward more sustainable and health-conscious dietary behaviors among individuals with higher socioeconomic status. However, these differences vary considerably depending on which indicator of socioeconomic status is examined. Here, we present a systematic parallel investigation of multiple indicators of socioeconomic...

Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, physical distancing was a recommended public health measure. For some older adults, distancing has not only been physical but also social due to a lack of access to the internet - either due to consciously opting out or lack of resources. This study aims to assess who is most at risk of not having access to...

What is the appropriate differentiation of digital public health versus digital health - or is there none? This is an essential question when pondering digitalisation and public health, especially with a view to the potential development of the field. Digital health seems to be a general term related to information and communication technology in h...

To paraphrase a classic, evaluating digital technologies in health is a bit like eating spinach - no one is against it in principle because it is good for you. However, no one would do it unless being asked to. In recent years, the sheer number of digital health technologies that potentially fulfil public health purposes has increased tremendously....

In diesem Kapitel beschreiben wir einige der gängigsten Theorien und Modelle, die im Kontext von Gesundheitsverhalten relevant sind. Diese Theorien und Modelle bilden die Grundlage für die Entwicklung und Evaluation von Maßnahmen zur Gesundheitsförderung. Die Evidenz zu Annahmen dieser Theorien und Modelle kann dann eine Entscheidungshilfe für die...

Background: Smokers can respond defensively to health risk communication such as on-pack warning labels, potentially reducing their effectiveness. Theory suggests that risk perception together with self-efficacy reduces defensive responses and predicts target behaviours. Currently, tobacco warning labels globally predominantly target risk and do n...

The widely used socioecological rainbow model from Dahlgren and Whitehead specifies determinants of health inequity on multiple hierarchical levels and suggests that these determinants may interact both within and between levels. At the time of its inception, digital determinants only played a minor role in tackling inequities in public health and...

Background Health literacy comprises the ability to identify, obtain, interpret and act upon health information. Low health literacy is a major risk factor for hospitalizations, use of emergency care and premature mortality among others. Known risk factors for low health literacy such as lower educational attainment, migration history and chronic i...

Public Health aims to promote and enhance the health status of individuals and communities through collective societal efforts. Recently, several digital technologies have emerged, pursuing the same goal, developing a novel concept: Digital Public Health. Given the rapidly increasing number of health-related digital technologies, a systematic frame...

A comprehensive small area description of regional variations in outpatient antibiotic prescribing in Germany is lacking. Using the German Pharmacoepidemiological Research Database (GePaRD), a claims database covering ~20% of the German population, we determined the age- and sex-standardized prescription rates of antibiotics (number of outpatient p...

We are dependent on our oceans for economic, health and social benefits; however, demands on our oceans are escalating, and the state of the oceans is deteriorating. Only 2% of countries are on track to achieve the desired outcomes for the sustainable development goal (SDG 14) for the oceans by 2030, and the changes needed to prevent further degrad...

Subjectively prioritizing health over other life domains is an indicator of health motivation and is associated with higher levels of health behaviors and more effective health behavior self‐regulation. However, little is known about when individuals prioritize health over other life domains and which factors predict prioritizing health. Here, we e...

Individuals’ perceived fairness or justice beliefs are related to health in numerous ways. However, environment justice research to date has given little attention to perceived fairness of environmental exposures as experienced by individuals. This study explored the feasibility of a bottom-up digital participatory (via mobile phones) approach usin...

Background Health literacy comprises the ability to identify, obtain, interpret and act upon health information. Low health literacy is a major risk factor for hospitalizations, use of emergency care and premature mortality among others. Known risk factors for low health literacy such as lower educational attainment, migration history and chronic i...

Background Unemployed persons are at high risk for low health literacy. Most studies addressing health literacy of unemployed persons focus on risk factors for low health literacy or correlates of health literacy, but studies on needs of unemployed persons regarding health literacy are scarce. We aimed to obtain better understanding of health liter...

Smoking is one of the leading causes of non-communicable disease mortality and morbidity. Smoking behaviour is determined by both stable, person-level (e.g., motivation, nicotine dependence) and variable, situation-level factors (e.g., urges, cues). However, most theoretical approaches to understanding health behaviours so far have not integrated t...

Misinformation on social media is a key challenge to effective and timely public health responses. Existing mitigation measures include flagging misinformation or providing links to correct information but have not yet targeted social processes. Here, we examine whether providing balanced social reference cues in addition to flagging misinformation...

Background There are substantial socioeconomic status (SES) differences in sports activity (SA) during the transition to retirement. In line with social-ecological models, the aim of this longitudinal study was to examine the association of perceptions of social and physical neighborhood factors with changes in SA across the retirement transition a...

Trajectories of chronic illnesses depend on patient socioeconomic status (SES). This study examines main and equity effects (age, gender, education, region of residence) of a brief telephone self‐management intervention on self‐rated health and depressive symptoms of health insurance clients with chronic illnesses. Randomized invitation design (n =...

Disadvantaged populations, including unemployed adults, often exhibit low levels of health literacy. Exploring subjectively perceived health literacy needs in these populations can serve as an entry point for participatory intervention development. We aimed to assess health literacy needs of unemployed adults by triangulating qualitative interviews...

Background Urban parks are critical environmental resources in which adolescents engage in physical activity (PA). Evidence on the associations between park environmental characteristics and park-based PA in adolescents is mixed, particularly for high-density cities. Evidence is also lacking concerning the moderating role of neighbourhood socioecon...

Background: Dietary behaviours are among the key modifiable risk factors for non-communicable diseases. Importantly, dietary behaviours vary substantially between groups and individuals with different socioeconomic positions, with more disadvantaged groups and individuals being exposed to more dietary risk factors. The goal of this review is to sum...

A disparity in the distribution and quality of urban parks has been widely recognized as an important environmental justice issue. There is currently inconsistent evidence focusing on park distribution in high-density cities that can shed light on socioeconomic inequalities in park quality. To address this issue from an environmental justice perspe...

Objective Adherence to protection behaviours remains key to curbing the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, but there are substantial differences in individual adherence to recommendations according to socio-structural factors. To better understand such differences, the current research examines whether relationships between health...

Abstract PURPOSE: In recent years, fitness armbands and smartwatches, namely wearable activity trackers (ATs), have become increasingly popular. Smartphones with in-built sensors also provide the capacity to monitor physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior (SB), and other health behaviors. There has been rapid growth in the use of wearable or sma...

Background Reducing inequalities in physical activity (PA) and PA-associated health outcomes is a priority for public health. Interventions to promote PA may reduce inequalities, but may also unintentionally increase them. Thus, there is a need to analyze equity-specific intervention effects. However, the potential for analyzing equity-specific eff...

Es gibt verschiedene Theorien und Modelle, die Gesundheitsverhalten beschreiben und erklären. Diese Theorien und Modelle sind vor allem deswegen wichtig, weil sie die Grundlage für die Entwicklung und Evaluation von Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung gesundheitsbezogenen Handelns und generell für die Optimierung von Verhaltensänderung sein können. Die Evid...

Psychologische Konzepte und Inhalte finden sich in vielen Bereichen von Public Health. Ausgehend von einem biopsychosozialen Modell von Gesundheit wird in diesem Beitrag gezeigt, in welchen für Public Health relevanten Bereichen neben biologischen eben auch psychologische und soziale Inhalte und Konzepte angewendet werden können. Dazu gehören Präve...

Background Given the absence of binding standards for noise action planning according to the European Noise Directive, citizens' engagement in public information and consultation processes are crucial for procedural environmental justice. Drawing on a conceptual model on cognitive-motivational determinants, we examined (1) engagement-specific self-...

Background Many discretionary foods (“snacks”) contribute both to individual health risks and to global issues, in particular through high carbon footprints and water scarcity. Snacking is influenced by the presence of snacking cues such as food availability, observing others eating, and negative affect. However, less is known about the mechanisms...

This research explored whether academic self-efficacy calibration (the match between self-efficacy beliefs and academic outcomes) in first-year psychology students (n=197) differed as a function of task type (written assignment/multiple-choice exam), domain specificity (task level/subject level), over time (mid-semester/end of semester) and accordi...