TARISMA – Targeted Risk Management in Musculoskeletal Diseases

The research network TARISMA (Targeted Risk Management in Musculoskeletal Diseases) was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2020 to 2024. Six subprojects have investigated deficits in health care in particularly vulnerable people (children, pregnant women, patients with serious comorbidities) and in people with chronic pain syndromes, and which measures can be used to improve interdisciplinary care. TARISMA involved four groups from the DRFZ’s Program Area Epidemiology, the Department of Pharmacoepidemiology at the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS in Bremen and the Institute of Community Medicine at University Medicine Greifswald.

Selected results are

• There is an urgent need to improve interprofessional collaboration in caring for patients with chronic back pain, multimorbidity or pregnancy.
• Rheumatoid arthritis combined with severe lung disease is associated with a high risk of mortality and insufficient care
• Young people with rheumatic diseases, like their healthy peers, spend far too much time being physically inactive.
• Smartphone apps are useful to better capture the views of people with rheumatic diseases in studies.

Three trained research partners from the German League against Rheumatism were involved in the projects from the outset.