National Institute of Medical Research

Francewww.inserm.fr/en

Inserm is the only public research organisation in France entirely dedicated to biomedical research and human health. Its objective is to promote the health of all by advancing knowledge about life and disease, treatment innovation, and public health research. It brings together teams at the forefront of research in epidemiology and public health and is sponsoring or managing the organisation of more than 70 cohorts, having many connections with international consortia. The researchers involved in LongITools are leading research on the impact of environment on health over the life-course. Their major aim is to show that ensuring the conditions of a nurturing and healthy early start in life for all has great potential to reach one major goal of the French National Strategy for Health: prioritising prevention rather than care of chronic diseases.

Role in LongITools

Inserm will be involved in particular in WP4 to 6, and lead tasks in work package 4, in environmental exposome-based epidemiology and mediation analysis. It will mainly coordinate the generation of anthropometric and cardio-metabolic health trajectories over childhood. Inserm will also coordinate the exposome assessment within the three French cohorts involved in LongITools. Indeed the Inserm members have leading positions in the coordination of two birth cohorts, EDEN (regional, N=2,000) and Elfe (national, N=18,000) and one adult cohort, CONSTANCES (national, N=200,000).

Barbara Heude

Principal Investigator (PI)

Barbara is a researcher at Inserm and has training in both statistics and epidemiology. Her main domain of interest is on early determinants of obesity, and more generally of early growth and development. She has been the PI of the EDEN Mother-child cohort since 2010, and the “physical growth and puberty” working group of the ELFE mother-child cohort study since 2008. Barbara’s role in LongITools is to lead two tasks on child’s growth and cardiometabolic trajectories and to coordinate the exposome assessment within the EDEN cohort.

Dr Bénédicte Jacquemin

Research Team

Bénédicte is a researcher at Inserm located in Rennes, working at the Research Institute for Environmental and Occupational Health. She has mainly worked on the study of the effects of outdoor air pollution on asthma and rhinitis and their associated features. More recently, she has also been interested in the effects of air pollution on other health outcomes including cognition, cancer and fertility / infertility. She has experience of coordinating and collaborating in a variety of projects, including four EU projects. Besides her activities as a researcher she is involved in teaching and expertise activities. Within LongITools, Bénédicte will lead the assessment of the exposome within the CONSTANCES cohort.

Johanna Lepeule

Research Team

Johanna is a researcher at Inserm. She was trained as an environmental epidemiologist specialising in the study of the effects of air pollutants on health. She then gained skills in epigenetic epidemiology during a post doctoral fellowship at Harvard School of Public Health. She participates in the PACE (Pregnancy and Childhood Epigenetics) consortium in which she is particularly involved in the analyses of associations of placental DNA methylation with maternal smoking and air pollution during pregnancy. She has coordinated several projects including the project on air pollution and placental DNA methylation in the EDEN cohort. Within LongITools, Johanna will lead the assessment of the exposome within the two birth cohorts EDEN and Elfe.