
Research topics of the Centre Virchow-Villermé
The Centre Virchow-Villermé is working on the following topics on an interdisciplinary basis:
- Climate change and health
- Massive Open Online Courses
- Promotion of German-French scientific exchange
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Research project 4C-Health
The research project "4C-Health" of CVV Paris is part of an international research cooperation of the journal Lancet on climate change and health: the "Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change". 4C-Health investigates how and to what extent climate change and health is reported among scientists, health professionals, policy makers and the public. The project consists of 4 separate reviews that analyse the current state of knowledge, gaps in understanding and communication between these parties.
More about 4C-Health
The four parts of the project:
Systematic review of the scientific literature on climate change and health
The scientific axis of the project “4CHealth” aims to provide a mapping of existing scientific literature in the area of climate change and health by building a database of relevant scientific articles, providing a better understanding of the gaps in this area of research and giving recommendations for future research projects.
Analysis of legislation
A long-term and comprehensive overview of how health is presented in climate change legislation is lacking in the legislative literature. To provide an overview of this topic, we analyze the database on global climate change legislation provided by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, a tool that provides relevant information on the state of climate-related policies. The 829 policies identified are systematically analyzed to determine how health is presented as a relevant aspect of climate legislation. We conduct exploratory research on national and supranational legislation and assume that health is addressed in different ways. The goal is to highlight how often, in what specific terms, which aspects of health or health risks of climate change are mentioned in various legislations.
Overview of media coverage of climate change and health
Articles published after the first IPCC report of 1990 and referring to "climate change" and "health" are identified in newspapers (Le Monde at first, the search is later extended to other newspapers). The articles will be classified and organized in a searchable database referencing data allowing quantitative and qualitative analyses.
Review of the climate change education in medical and public health curricula
For this axis, we will review the state of climate change education in medical and public health curricula by conducting a survey in medical schools and public health institutions of the M8 Alliance and other networks.
Contact: Dr Anneliese Depoux
Massive Open Online Courses
One of the aims of the Centre Virchow-Villermé is to provide a freely accessible and innovative education in the field of public and global health. For example, the CVV's "MOOC Factory" has developed and produced 20 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in since 2013. The MOOCs are scientifically accompanied in order to better understand this innovative form of knowledge transfer.
More about #MOOCLive
The MOOC Factory is a rich field of study for its technical team and the researchers in information and communication sciences at the Centre Virchow-Villermé. They analyse the MOOCs they produce in terms of academic quality, ensure the courses suitability, and modify them if required.
They are particularly interested in the following topics:
- The role of MOOCs in the higher education landscape
- Digital competence and knowledge transfer through innovative formats
- Use and practices of the MOOC
- Role of the lecturer in the students' evaluation of the course and the topic under study.
- MOOCs as a response tool for coping with health crises
In cooperation with the company ANEO, the data generated by the MOOC participants are analysed in order to better understand user behaviour, for example, and subsequently adapt teaching programmes according to their target group and improve the effectiveness of the MOOCs.
The main objectives of this research project are:
- To model the participants behaviour, which is influenced by multiple and geo-dependent factors;
- To develop methods for the automatic modelling of the MOOCs’ participants;
- To use these models to optimize the MOOCs and make them more effective;
- To make use of the fine behaviour modelling to analyse other behaviours than those related to learning, such as people’s attitude towards health expenses.
Contact: Dr. Anneliese Depoux
Funded Projects
- Development of a Comparable Health Status Assessment in French and German Populations (Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin + Université Paris Diderot)
- The Value of Indirect Protection by Vaccination: A Tool for Evaluation of Population-level Preferences in France and Germany (EHESP + LMU München)
- Le social à l’hôpital au XXIe siècle – L’accès aux soins des populations démunies et sans couverture sociale en France et Allemagne (Université Paris 13 + Centre Marc Bloch Berlin)
- Pay-for-performance in France and Germany: Learning from others, why not from each other? (Université Paris Diderot + TU Berlin)