The Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine at the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover is one of the leading university-based public health departments in Germany. It is divided into units for health system analysis, epidemiology, prevention, and health economics. The department offers a postgraduate master's degree program in public health. The staff number is approximately 25, two-thirds of whom are researchers. The German Federal Ministries of Health and of Education, Science, Research, and Technology are the major providers of research grants. The department is the managerial focus of the North German Center for Public Health Research. Internationally, the department is an active member of the International Society of Technology Assessment in Health Care (ISTAHC), the European Healthcare Management Association (EHMA), and the International Society for Quality Assurance (ISQua). The department has been involved in several European-wide studies and collaborates with the World Health Organization (WHO).