June 2018
SPECIAL ISSUE 3

Diabetes Surveillance in Germany

Special Issue S3/2018 of the Journal of Health Monitoring focuses on diabetes surveillance in Germany. Diabetes mellitus plays a central role among the noncommunicable diseases due to the large number of people affected. Against this background, the Robert Koch Institute is developing a public health surveillance system in Germany using diabetes as an example.

The Special Issue shows how a set of relevant indicators for diabetes surveillance was defined using a structured consensus process. A further article describes the first results of the study ‘Disease knowledge and information needs – Diabetes mellitus (2017)’. For this nationwide telephone survey people with and without diabetes were interviewed by the Robert Koch Institute.

The results provide insights into what people in Germany know about diabetes, what information they require, where they look for information and how they rate the available information.