Federal Institute for Prevention and Education in Medicine

The Federal Institute for Prevention and Education in Medicine or Bundesinstitut für Prävention und Aufklärung in der Medizin (BIPAM) in Germany is an independent federal public health authority being planned by the Federal Ministry of Health (Germany), spearheaded by health minister Karl Lauterbach, and expected to be implemented by January 2025. It is charged to focus on non-communicable diseases like cardiac disease, cancer and dementia, and will subsume health education tasks, so far handled by the Federal Centre for Health Education in Cologne.

The law making process began in 2023, and the bill is expected to be sent to the Bundestag before summer. The designated head of BIPAM will be Johannes Niessen, previously head of the Cologne department of health.

Reception
Lars Schaade, director of the RKI welcomed the move. While the RKI has been the most important public health institution in Germany, it has no mandate to recommend any interventions regarding non-communicable diseases.

Other representatives of the German public health community have been critical, either calling it "symbolic politics", avoiding difficult discussions on limiting personal freedoms on sugar consumption, tobacco or overdue speed limits on the Autobahn; others are critical of the speed of the reform process without "independent scientific evaluation of what happened in the local public health services" after the COVID pandemic.