Prof. Dr. phil Annika Frahsa is a social scientist with a focus on health promotion. Since 2021, she has been Professor of Socio-Spatial Health Systems Research at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Bern. Her research group, community health and health(care) systems research, operates within a qualitative-participatory paradigm, with a thematic focus on questions concerning the social distribution of health opportunities within local environments. A particular emphasis of her work lies in participatory research with vulnerable and often marginalized population groups. In doing so, she combines academic perspectives with a strong practical orientation to enable sustainable change in the health system.

Professor Frahsa studied political science and North American studies at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) and McGill University in Montreal (Canada). She earned her doctorate in sports science at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg with a thesis on physical activity-related health promotion and completed her habilitation at the University of Tübingen. Since 2022, she has been a member of the extended spokesperson group of PARTnet, the German-speaking network for participatory health research.