Public health

Created in partnership with the national agency Santé publique France, the Public Health Annual Chair is designed to encourage excellence in research and intellectual debate at the highest level on public health issues.

Environment and Health in the Anthropocene

Significant progress has been made in understanding the mechanisms - or proximalcauses - of chronic diseases and their treatment. This lecture addresses the question of their more distant causes, focusing on physico-chemical factors, and their prevention. We'll look at observational and experimental approaches, particularly in epidemiology and toxicology, to identify the causes of diseases that are generally neither necessary nor sufficient, and which can have a long-term impact on the risk of a multifactorial chronic pathology. Focusing on factors whose levels have risen sharply during the Anthropocene, the lecture will review families of compounds with proven effects on health (lead, airborne particles), followed by factors for which knowledge is more recent, such as certain endocrine disruptors. The challenges of risk management and the notions of theexposome, which aims to be a counterpart to the genome, and the global burden of disease attributable to the environment, which aims to establish a hierarchy of the health impact of environmental factors, will be discussed. Finally, a symposium will look at how research in environmental health and the humanities can be mobilized to help tackle climate change, and support the changes required to move towards a carbon-neutral society, while preserving public health as far as possible.