"I warmly congratulate Professor Eckhard Nagel on today's award of the Federal Cross of Merit. For more than two decades, he has helped to shape forward-looking developments at the University of Bayreuth in an extraordinarily competent and prudent manner, and has driven them forward with outstanding commitment. In recent times, for example, he has made a great contribution to the development of the Upper Franconia Medical Campus and the planning and founding of the Faculty of Life Sciences: Food, Health & Nutrition in Kulmbach, which has risen to prominence far beyond the region. Professor Eckhard Nagel has played a major role in the interdisciplinary linking of research and teaching in the fields of health sciences, economics, and ethics, which has shaped the profile of the University of Bayreuth," explained University President Prof. Dr. Stefan Leible.
Focal points of the scientific activity of Prof. Dr. Dr. med. habil. Dr. phil. Dr. theol. h.c. Eckhard Nagel's research focuses on public health, prevention and health promotion, digitalisation, medical ethics, technology assessment in medicine, health economics, and health services research. Among other things, he is concerned with health promotion for children and adolescents, with ethical questions in the course of digitalisation in medicine, and with the challenge of ensuring high-quality health care in rural regions of Germany. Nagel is the coordinator of the "Global Food, Nutrition & Health" master's programme and the new "Environment, Climate Change and Health" master's programme, which is scheduled to start at the University of Bayreuth in the 2022/23 winter semester. At the Campus Academy of the University of Bayreuth, he is responsible for the MBA programme "Responsibility, Leadership and Communication".
During the Covid 19 pandemic, Nagel repeatedly provided important public statements, drawing particular attention to the living situation of children and young people. Since 2001, he has been Chairman of the Board of the Rudolf Pichlmayr Foundation, which supports chronically ill children and their families. In Wuhan, China, Nagel is a visiting professor at the Tongji Medical Faculty of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and German president of Tongji Hospital. He has been a member of the board of Health Care Bayern e.V. since 2018 and chairman of the board of the German Society for Integrated Health Care (DGIV) since 2020.
From 2008 to 2016, Nagel was a member of the German Ethics Council, before which he was a founding member of the National Ethics Council from 2001 until its dissolution in 2008. Since 2014, Nagel has been a member of the Presidium of the German Protestant Congress, from 2001 to 2013 he was a member of its Presidium Board. In 2005 he chaired the 30th German Protestant Congress in Hanover, and in 2010 he was the Protestant President of the 2nd Ecumenical Congress in Munich.
With contributions on current scientific topics, Prof. Dr. mult. Eckhard Nagel has repeatedly featured in SPEKTRUM, the science magazine of the University of Bayreuth:
