Heike Baehrens

Heike Baehrens (born 21 September 1955) is a German deaconess, religious educator and politician (SPD). Since the federal election in 2013, she is a member of the German Bundestag.

Early life and career
After training as a bank clerk, she studied religious education. She worked as a deaconess in various church fields from 1977 to 1985. From 1996 to 2013 she has been managing director of the Diakonisches Werk Württemberg, and from 2002 to 2013 a member of the full-time board of directors of social policy fields and deputy chairman of the board. As a church councilor, she was a deputy to Dieter Kaufmann in the college of the Upper Church Council of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg.

Career in local politics
Baehrens joined the SPD in 1988. From 1989 to 1996 she was a member of the Stuttgart municipal council. There she was first youth and social policy spokeswoman for the SPD group. From 1992 to 1996 she was deputy chairman of the SPD group in the Stuttgart municipal council.

Member of Parliament, 2013–present
In the 2013 federal elections, Baehrens moved to the German Bundestag via the SPD state list Baden-Württemberg for the Bundestag constituency Göppingen. She has since been a full member of the Bundestag Committee on Health, where she is her parliamentary group's rapporteur on inclusion and European affairs. Since 2018, she has also been serving as chairwoman of its Sub-Committee on Global Health.

In addition to her committee assignments, Baehrens serves as Deputy Chairwoman of the German-Korean Parliamentary Group as well as Deputy Speaker of the Baden-Württemberg State Group of the SPD parliamentary group. She is a member of the non-partisan Europa-Union Deutschland, which is committed to a federal Europe and a far-reaching European unification process.

Since the 2021 elections, Baehrens has been serving as her parliamentary group's spokesperson for health. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, she joined forces with six other parliamentarians – Dirk Wiese, Dagmar Schmidt, Janosch Dahmen, Till Steffen, Katrin Helling-Plahr and Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann – on a cross-party initiative in 2022 to support legislation that would have required all adults to be vaccinated.

In April 2024, Baehrens announced that she would not stand in the 2025 federal elections but instead resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term.

Other activities

 * German Network against Neglected Tropical Diseases (DNTDs), Member of the Parliamentary Advisory Board (since 2018)
 * Berliner Republik, Member of the Editorial Board
 * Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Member of the Committee on the Social Order
 * VfB Stuttgart, Member

Personal life
Baehrens is married since 1977 and has two adult daughters and three grandchildren.