Great success for MCI at the Health Research Award 2022

MCI graduates awarded for outstanding theses in the categories “Health Promotion” and “Health Care Services”

The Health Research Award honours outstanding master theses from Austrian universities of applied sciences in the field of health. As in previous years, this year, MCI graduates from the “International Health & Social Management” master program were able to convince the jury of the quality and relevance of their theses.

With her master thesis “Studying in times of a pandemic: Effects of COVID-19 on the mental health status and academic performance of university students in Austria. A survey on the status quo, future implications, and demand”, Julia Pickelmann won the first prize in the Health Promotion category. In the course of her research, she sent an online questionnaire to all 73 tertiary educational institutions in Austria. A total of 5,098 questionnaires were included in the evaluation. Please find more information on her research here.

The first prize in the category of Health Care Services went to Madeleine Waser for her master thesis on  “HPV vaccine acceptance in Tyrol/Austria: Assessing knowledge, attitudes, and practices of parents of vaccine-eligible children.”  Her project deals with the factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy and HPV vaccine uptake. In the empirical part, parents' knowledge about HPV, their attitudes towards vaccination, sources of information, socio-economic factors as well as the acceptance of HPV vaccination were assessed using a cross-sectional survey.

Siegfried Walch, Head of the Department of International Health & Social Management at MCI, is proud of our graduates: "This award confirms the commitment of the graduates of our internationally oriented Master's program in Health Management and shows how they can make a direct contribution to solving such important social and economic tasks."

The Health Research Award is organized by the Health Management Network of the Austrian University of Applied Sciences and sponsored by the association of Austrian Pharmaceutical Companies PHARMIG, JANSSEN, and hospital group VINZENZ GRUPPE.