Research Areas

The research of the group has the goal of sustainably improving the primary care of people with non-communicable chronic diseases (initially coronary heart disease) with regard to health-relevant behaviour (initially physical activity). The focus is on patient-physician communication on health behaviour and especially on supported behaviour change.

Academic Career

Sabrina Kastaun studied Psychology and obtained her PhD in 2015 from Justus Liebig University Giessen. For her doctoral research project she was part of the „Heart and Brain Research Group“ a collaborative project between Giessen University Hospital, the Department of Cardiac Surgery at the Kerkhoff Centre for Heart, Thorax and Rheumatic Diseases Bad Nauheim and the research unit Cognitive Neuroscience at  Justus Liebig University Giessen from 2010 - 2015. In parallel she worked as a clinical neuropsychologist at the University Hospital Giessen. Since 2015, Sabrina Kastaun has been coordinating the Addiction Research and Clinical Epidemiology Unit at the Institute of General Practice at HHU as a postdoctoral researcher. Now she heads the Patient-Physician Communication Research Unit there, in which the junior research group OptiCor is located.

• Research prize of the North German Addiction Research Association, 2021

• Dr. Lothar Beyer Prize, 2019