Elisabeth Sievert successfully completes her PhD

Elisabeth Sievert studied psychology and health sciences in Hamburg and Maastricht. Her research focuses on the individual and social consequences of infectious diseases (e.g. antibiotic resistance, post-acute infection syndromes). From 2021 to 2025, she was a research associate in the DFG-funded project Health Games at the Chair of Health Communication. She is also a member of the Institute for Planetary Health Behaviour and the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg.

In her dissertation, she investigated patients’ expectations of being prescribed antibiotics. Prior research has shown these expectations to be an important factor influencing physicians’ prescribing behaviour.

Her work also involved developing and testing communication strategies to reduce the inappropriate use of antibiotics. In eight randomised online experiments with over 9,000 participants, she demonstrated that transparent communication of diagnostic uncertainty, clarification of individual and societal costs (e.g. microbiome disruption and antibiotic resistance), and information about the self-limiting nature of many symptoms can effectively reduce expectations of antibiotic treatment.

Another focus of her work was the evaluation of a WHO decision aid that supports patients in actively monitoring symptoms and taking antibiotics only when they are truly necessary.

With this research, Elisabeth Sievert makes an important contribution to evidence-based, behavioural  science–informed antimicrobial stewardship and to the development of scalable interventions that may help preserve the effectiveness of existing antibiotics as a shared global resource in the long term.

We congratulate Elisabeth Sievert on completing her doctorate!