We believe that we need a New Health Movement which challenges the current healthcare system. In this project, we aim to encourage each other to practise making demands, to reach out and connect to other groups and their struggles, to inform ourselves about their needs and perspectives and to form alliances for making all of our intersecting demands heard.

This project draws its inspiration from the historic Health Movement (Gesundheitsbewegung), which was vital in West Germany during the late 1970s and 1980s. The Health Movement channelled dissatisfaction with the healthcare system and proposed new models for how healthcare could be done differently.

The Health Movement was successful in criticising classism and hierarchy in the medical sector, as well as the sexism and patriarchy structuring the medical complex. But now, it is up to us to add missing perspectives to the historic Health Movement’s approaches, and to centre the voices and needs of people most deserving and currently most deprived of fair, just and accessible healthcare.

When we think of the healthcare system, we often imagine an abstract entity that seems too huge and too complex for us to challenge by ourselves. Because it is difficult to fully understand the complexity of the healthcare system, it seems hard for us to express what we believe must change. Yet the effects of an unfair, harmful, structurally racist, classist, ableist, stressful, understaffed and/or underfunded healthcare system are tangible for all of us. We insist that the perspectives of users of the healthcare system are essential, and should be decisive in how the healthcare system needs to change.

The New Health Movement Feminist Healthcare Research Group (Julia Bonn and Inga Zimprich) together with Alina Buchberger, Huong Nam Nguyen Thi, Pasquale Virginie Rotter, Kim Wichera.

The project group The New Health Movement talks with self-organised political initiatives and individuals about their needs for an accessible and fair healthcare system. Within this project, initiatives and individuals such as Bundesfachnetz Gesundheit und Rassismus, Casa Kuà, Mine Wenzel, <Platz da!>, Romani Phen and Women in Exile collect their demands in workshops or meet in internal focus groups.

The interview series, zine and poster We demand! is supported by Mindscapes, Wellcome’s international programme about mental health. The project The New Health Movement is funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste.

Editing: The New Health Movement project group

Participating Initiatives and Individuals: Bundesfachnetz Gesundheit und Rassismus, Casa Kuà, Mine Wenzel, <Platz da!>, Romani Phen and Women in Exile

Poster design & illustration: Tina Kaden

Proofreading: Stassja Mrozinski

We are working towards making this website accessible. We are currently preparing German Sign Language videos which will be uploaded soon. We are aiming at uploading texts in German Leichte Sprache soon.

We have aimed at producing a high contrast, easy to read website that is screen-reader compatible. 

Please contact us if you need content in other formats feministische.recherchegruppe@gmail.com