Head of Centre
Michel Setbon
Michel Setbon is a sociologist and Director of Research at the CNRS Laboratoire d’Economie et de Sociologie du Travail (LEST – Institute of Labour Economics and Industrial Sociology) in Aix en Provence. His main research focuses on the new public health problems (AIDS, hepatitis, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, chikungunya and dengue fever), the health risks and the fight against drugs. He is a member of several scientific committees and interdisciplinary expert groups set up to take account of social, decision-making and behavioural factors in the spread and reduction of these emerging pathologies.
Partners
CNRS
Strategic objectives
- Develop an interdisciplinary approach (concepts, methods, procedures and standards) for risk analysis.
- Extend risk analysis and regulation to all partners concerned and in particular to public health professionals, while removing barriers between the various structured risk approaches depending on the sectors and disciplines.
- Encourage and systemise multidisciplinary research.
- Raise the profile of French risk research in the international arena: publications, conferences, expert evaluations.
- Establish and develop links with international organisations working on risk.
- Position the CIRR as a risk research and analysis body (recognised by government authorities, insurance companies, financial bodies, etc.) by developing evaluation, expertise and action and communication scenario analysis services.
- Contribute its risk knowledge base to the EHESP syllabus.
Personnel
- 4 scientists and lecturers
- 1 engineer
- 2 PhDs
- 2 to 4 PhD students
Missions
- The concept of risk is central to public health. Whether from the cognitive or operational point of view, public health is founded on risk, to the extent that some people reduce the public health approach (identification of causes or risk factors at population level) to the science of risk. Risk analysis and public health share the same ultimate goal of determining what action can reduce the risk and its consequences.
- More recently, risk analysis has become a subject in its own right, drawing on several disciplines such as epidemiology, economics, sociology, psychology, biostatistics, legal and political sciences. However, the academic structure of our major research bodies, engineering schools and universities does not make it easy to bring together the many disciplines concerned by risk in one particular place with common scientific aims. The CIRR will draw together the skills, extend experience, amass results and preserve this form of interdisciplinarity that is considered essential.
- There is a strong demand for an independent centre of this type which will stand out from other organisations and institutions concerned which are often under intrinsic pressure to confound risk evaluation and risk management. The CIRR, with a clear scientific basis, will play a different role, that of organising research, producing and disseminating knowledge, as well as creating new methodologies and promoting the adoption of innovations. The centre will establish its raison d’être and its reputation on the quality of its scientific research and its firm application of professional practices.
Scope
The proposed creation of an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to the analysis and regulation of health risks is based on the awareness of risks and health crises in developed democratic societies.
In a few decades risk has become a major social, political and economic issue and a powerful force in institutional change and regulation. Unlike many developed countries (USA, United Kingdom, Sweden and Germany), France does not have a health risk research and interdisciplinary education centre and, consequently French research does not feature prominently in scientific publications and has a low international visibility in this field.
The creation of the EHESP in 2008 provided the opportunity to create the CIRR to fill this gap by bringing together scientists, lecturers and professionals from the disciplines and fields concerned by health risk, a concept central to public health.
The CIRR will focus on the links forged between scientific knowledge and public health and public decision-making practices with the aims of:
- organising an interdisciplinary risk research network to develop integrated risk analysis and regulation mode expertise services;
- making French risk research more visible in the international arena;
- increasing the number of publications on risk, while exchanging experience and methodological innovations with other countries;
- providing high level courses on health risks.
The CIRR will also contribute to public health promotion by producing appropriate analyses on risk evaluation and regulation processes.
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