Curriculum Vitae

Prof. Ravens-Sieberer is Professor for Public Health, Health Psychology and Health Care Services Research for Children and Adolescents at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany. As research director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics she is leading the research group “Child Public Health”. Prior to this position (2006–2008) she was Professor for Psychosocial Health Care Services Research and Health Psychology at the School of Public Health, University of Bielefeld, director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Child and Adolescent Health Promotion, and head of the research group “Indicators of Child and Adolescent Health” at the Robert Koch Institute, the Federal Public Health Research Institution in Germany (2000–2006).

In her current position as head of the research group “Child Public Health”, she is responsible for coordinating and conducting German and European health surveys on health behaviour, health related quality of life, and mental health in children and adolescents. Her work focuses on prevention and health promotion, on research of active coping styles, on health education and health behaviour, on social resources and lifestyle, and on the development of supportive programmes for health promotion. This work also includes developing methods for assessing quality of life and mental well-being in children and adolescents in order to promote cross-cultural quality of life research and assessment as well as the application of quality of life measures in health reporting and health surveys. Her involvement in Health related Quality of Life research started 1990 – since then she has been active in developing own instruments, translating existing international instruments, conducting psychometric tests on them and introducing mental health and quality of life assessment into clinical trials and epidemiological studies both in adults and children.

She is member of several professional societies and has published over 100 scientific papers. Furthermore, she is on the board of directors of the Co-ordinating Committee of the WHO “Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC)” study, director of the Pan-European “KIDSCREEN” study, director of the German “Child Mental Health - BELLA” study, member of the Pan-European “DISABKIDS” Study, member of the advisory board of the European “Measuring Health and Disability in Europe” study, independent expert of the European Union in the area “Public Health and Policy Orientated Research”, and WHO Research Officer – “Child Health”, focussing on harmonising international child health indicators.

Ulrike Ravens-Sieberer was born in 1964 in Düsseldorf, Germany. After completing her school leaving examinations in 1983 in Meerbusch, she studied English in Cambridge, and Psychology and Public Health in Munich where she received her degree in 1992. She obtained her doctoral degree in educational psychology in 1996 and habilitated in Medical Psychology at the University of Hamburg.