Karl Lauterbach

Karl Lauterbach (born 1963) is a German physician, health scientist and politician of the Social Democratic Party who served as Federal Minister of Health from 2021 to 2025 and has sat in the Bundestag since the 2005 election. He studied human medicine at RWTH Aachen University, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Düsseldorf, and from 1989 to 1995 studied at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he earned a Master of Public Health, a Master of Science in health policy and management and a Doctor of Science. Since 1998 he has headed the Institute of Health Economics and Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Cologne, which states that his scientific focus is preventive healthcare, health care quality and epigenetics. He became widely known in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic through his television appearances as an invited expert.