English – Presentation

In 2020, Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC) launched the E-city urban health research program, with the aim of studying socio-environmental health issues in the eastern and southern parts of the Paris region, home to almost 2 million people.

 

The ambition of the E-city program is to unite UPEC research laboratories, academic partners and local authorities around the theme of health in the city. E-city is organized around the urban ecosystem as a full-scale laboratory. It relies on the construction of cohorts (student, urban population) and field surveys as central devices for the empirical analysis of territorial data.

 

• The aim ? To study the impact of environmental nuisances, exposures and pollution, as well as social, demographic and lifestyle changes, on the health trajectories of individuals. In other words, it's a rare cohort study of lifestyle AND health.
• What's at stake ? Breaking down the barriers to thinking about health in urban environments, to better understand the dynamics of health and the construction of social inequalities in health, but also to identify opportunities and tackle the question of the conditions for successful public policies. Continuously questioning the field and co-constructing health and environmental issues with local players to reduce social injustice.

 

An innovative, interdisciplinary research program

 

E-city has established itself as an incubator for interdisciplinary research, encouraging innovative methodological approaches and making a strong commitment to its academic, institutional and professional partners.

Marcus Zepf, Professor at the École d'Urbanisme de Paris (EUP) and co-director of the EUP, and Isabelle Coll, Professor at the Faculté des Sciences et Technologies, have been involved in building this program, working closely with UPEC's various laboratories and departments.

E-city capitalizes on success stories involving the university's laboratories, such as the DIM and DRIM 1-Health (human, animal and environmental health), the DIM QI² (impacts and innovations in air quality) and the Ecole Universitaire de Recherche LIVE on health vulnerability trajectories.

Empowerment: making everyone a player in their own health

 

E-city is a research-action program that also aims to develop people's skills and knowledge concerning their health and their environment. This is a decisive lever in enabling respondents to take ownership of their health trajectory. Responding to the cohort questionnaire is not only a way of becoming aware of one's health, but also an opportunity to become involved in a community of exchanges on health and the environment. E-city is committed to promoting this dynamic within UPEC and local authorities, raising awareness by sharing knowledge and organizing events (workshops, stands, conferences, seminars, etc.).

 

 

 

E-city addresses the population in a given area: eastern and southern Ile-de-France

 

The E-city research program is a locally-based project. The City of Créteil and, more broadly, the municipalities in the 11 and 12 territories of the Greater Paris region, are special partners for carrying out research projects on populations, particularly the most vulnerable - the elderly and people losing their independence, precarious students... - and for carrying out concerted actions, with a view to disseminating knowledge and defining fairer, more effective public policies.

Access to this field of experimentation enables us to apprehend the environmental and social aspects of health, and to tackle the issue of the exposome, i.e. all the exposures to environmental factors to which our bodies are exposed (pollution, noise, eating habits, chronic stress, social life...). E-city is in line with the WHO's vision that the greatest advances in health could come from social and environmental improvements.

 

Last but not least, E-city is rooted in the local community. E-city aims to break down the barriers between scientific research and dialogue between academia and civil society, to open up the university to the city, to coordinate the actions of UPEC's departments and the surrounding area, and to stimulate local life around environmental health issues. In this respect, E-city is a key tool in the Erasme transformation project, through which UPEC aims to become, within the next 10 years, a university committed to its local community.