Increasing life expectancy, progressive digitalization, and an increasing variety of life plans: Our society is currently undergoing a profound process of change which presents the health system with new challenges regarding its content and structure.

The framework conditions, which have changed due to aging, mechanization, and diversity, also influence fundamental normative concepts of health and disease, equality of access and distribution, as well as intercultural and intergenerational solidarity. This, in turn, has consequences for the prevailing normative ideas, regulations, and supply expectations.

In the NoWa project, the changing value structure and the development of standards in inter- and transdisciplinary research is examined in more detail. In a conceptually and normatively oriented research part, interdisciplinary knowledge is combined, taking into account different ethical discourse traditions and ideological justification patterns. A collaborative-empirical part focuses on transdisciplinary exchange in order to jointly develop sustainable recommendations for action and orientation aids.

Among other things, a model for determining the concepts of health and disease, justice and solidarity is developed that considers various real social contexts. The matrix developed then results in a normative catalog of criteria for health policy and health care professionals to analyze and evaluate the framework conditions for health care in a demographically changing society.

The main task of ITAS in the project is the organization of a Forum of the Future in Karlsruhe. In five Forums of the Future throughout Germany, the effects of social change will be differentiated and empirically as well as qualitatively validated in an inter- and transdisciplinary dialog along the dimensions of aging, diversity, and mechanization for the normative concepts of health, disease, solidarity, and justice. ITAS is also involved in the conceptual design and organization of the Future Summit. Here, all available work results from the research and dialog elements will be brought together and put up for public discussion on a larger scale by all project participants. Overall, ITAS contributes its expertise on relevant “focal points” and value conflicts in all process steps, especially against the background of social change along the dimensions of aging and mechanization.

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