Publications

Background:
Reducing the mortality burden associated with urban air pollution constitutes a public health priority, and evidence of unequal exposure and susceptibility across population subgroups is growing. Many European countries have implemented low emission zones (LEZs) in densely populated city centers. Although LEZs decrease air pollution exposure and health impacts, evidence is lacking on their impact across neighborhoods and socio-economic groups.
Objectives:
The aim of this study was to evaluate the most equitable approach to implementing the second phase of the LEZ in Paris, France. We also present a literature review of the studies evaluating the benefits associated with LEZs in Europe.
Methods:
A health impact assessment (HIA) was conducted to quantify changes in air pollution exposure and expected health benefits by socioeconomic group and neighborhood related to four hypothetical scenarios for the second phase of the LEZ based on French Deprivation Index scores. The study focused on NO2 and PM2.5 as air pollutants and evaluated the impact of the LEZ on the inequitable burden of childhood asthma and all-cause premature adult mortality. We also conducted an economic evaluation associated with the LEZ benefits on prevented deaths and asthma cases.
Results:
The scenario with the largest LEZ perimeter and the most stringent vehicle standards prevented the highest number of cases and produced the most equitable distribution of health benefits, especially childhood asthma. It is expected that 810 deaths and 3200 cases of asthma could be prevented from the LEZ extension in this scenario. These results were distributed heterogeneously across three socioeconomic (SES) groups, most noticeably with asthma cases as 230, 180, and 210 cases were avoided per 100,000 inhabitants in high, medium, and low SES groups, respectively. We found substantial economic benefits associated with LEZ, with estimates ranging from €0.76 billion to €2.36 billion for prevented deaths. The benefits associated with asthma reduction ranged from €2.3 million to €8.3 million.
Discussion:
Conducting HIAs with a focus on equity will further inform policy makers of the impact of LEZ models on air pollution, health, and environmental justice. Developing these systematic methods and applying them to future LEZs and other air pollution policies will increase their effectiveness to reduce the burden of ambient air pollution on society and the environment.

Background:
Epistemic injustices are increasingly decried in global health. This study aims to investigate whether the source of knowledge influences the perception of that knowledge and the willingness to use it in francophone African health policy-making context.
Methods:
The study followed a randomized experimental design in which participants were randomly assigned to one of seven policy briefs that were designed with the same scientific content but with different organizations presented as authors. Each organization was representative of financial, scientific or moral authority. For each type of authority, two organizations were proposed: one North American or European, and the other African.
Results:
The initial models showed that there was no significant association between the type of authority or the location of the authoring organization and the two outcomes (perceived quality and reported instrumental use). Stratified analyses highlighted that policy briefs signed by the African donor organization (financial authority) were perceived to be of higher quality than policy briefs signed by the North American/European donor organization. For both perceived quality and reported instrumental use, these analyses found that policy briefs signed by the African university (scientific authority) were associated with lower scores than policy briefs signed by the North American/European university.
Conclusions:
The results confirm the significant influence of sources on perceived global health knowledge and the intersectionality of sources of influence. This analysis allows us to learn more about organizations in global health leadership, and to reflect on the implications for knowledge translation practices.

Sub-Saharan African countries experience various market failures and other constraints in food production, marketing, and food consumption. Consequently, sub-Saharan Africa governments have put in place a myriad of policies to counter these failures. Agricultural, food and nutrition policies address nutrition outcomes, such as hunger, undernourishment, wasting, stunting, child mortality, inadequate food consumption, food insecurity, and volatile food prices, thus improve nutrition outcomes among the population. However, malnutrition persists among the population in the region. To mitigate this challenge, informed, evidence-based policy development and implementation by policy practitioners is of essence. The solutions to the double burden of undernutrition and obesity cut across the agriculture, rural development, and public health sectors. This essay introduces twenty papers of this Special Issue of the Food Policy journal which analyzes 8 policy domains, contributes to the debate on the linkages and pathways through which policies influence food security, nutrition outcomes, and related indicators and points to policy directions in these domains.

La Revue économique rend hommage à Philippe Mongin, figure marquante de l’économie théorique et de la philosophie des sciences sociales, récipiendaire du Prix de la Revue en 2020 et décédé la même année à l’âge de 70 ans. Dans ce numéro spécial sont rassemblées des contributions qui montrent la diversité et la fécondité de ses travaux dans des domaines aussi variés que l’épistémologie de l’économie, l’application de la théorie des jeux en histoire, l’économie du bien-être ou encore l’agrégation des jugements. /
We build up a general purpose decision model to predict the choice between going to war and staying at peace for a rational decision-maker. This model articulates root causes such as the risk of future war and parameters such as potential gains in case of victory, potential losses in case of defeat, the probability of victory and the war human losses. We apply and calibrate this model to the case of German and French decision-makers at the very end of July 1914, taking into account the decisions already taken by Austria-Hungary and Russia and the uncertainty surrounding the decision of Great Britain. We assume a short war that does not last beyond 1914. Our model predicts the entry into the war of Germany and France, the argument of preventive war (going to war today rather than tomorrow) proving to be decisive for both countries, with the added benefit for France of the potential recovery of Alsace-Moselle in the event of victory. The computation reveals that of the two countries, it was France that seems to have the most interest in the war, making it possible to explain the passive behavior of the French leaders, Raymond Poincare in the first place, who, if they did not provoke the war, did not really try to avoid it either.