Interview Marta Hugas Chair of the Scientific Board

How does giving the Scientific Board an international dimension enrich ANSES’s work?

The Scientific Board gives its opinion on the Agency’s research orientations, methodologies and expert appraisal process, as well as on its work programme and scientific partnership policy. Its role is to guarantee the quality, relevance and consistency of scientific work in relation to health issues and trends. The Board includes members from a wide range of disciplines and
from different organisations in France, Europe and abroad, enabling it to provide far-reaching insights into current health challenges.

This major advantage is also an opportunity to learn from best practices and a wide variety of situations involving research and assessment, and to share information on risks in various countries. In addition, it gives ANSES great potential
for going further in implementing the One Health approach and taking account of climate change and socio-economic determinants when analysing the risks that weigh on society. Last but not least, this openness provides new opportunities for strengthening scientific cooperation to achieve common strategic objectives, particularly at European level.

More specifically, how has the Scientific Board been working since it was set up?

The Scientific Board is made up of 24 scientists selected following a call for applications. It also includes three members of ANSES’s scientific staff, elected by their peers, as well as two ex-officio members appointed by the chairs of the scientific boards of Santé publique France and the ANSM. These 29 members have a wide range of scientific backgrounds, and many of them come from European and international – Canadian and American, for example – universities and health assessment agencies. Their expertise covers the Agency’s entire scope of action, including zoonoses, infectious diseases, parasites, toxicology, and
occupational and plant health. We communicate in English and meet for plenary sessions at the head office in Maisons-Alfort.
At the beginning, there was a phase of acculturation to become familiar with all the Agency’s missions and how it works in France, with its partners and supervisory ministries. I would like to thank the French experts and the teams at ANSES for their hard work and for being available to shed light on all the intricacies of the Agency. We were all surprised by its broad sphere of action, and we needed to clearly grasp the Agency’s organisation and the extent of its work.

What projects are currently under way and in the pipeline?

We are in the process of refining our roadmap and priorities for this year. Following on from the challenges already addressed by the previous Scientific Board, we have identified several major projects, including undertaking further work on methodologies for the socio-economic analysis of health issues, and developing new methodological approaches to understanding microbial resistance and the hazards associated with chemicals, for example. We also need to think about how we can integrate the climate crisis into risk assessments and research. Defining data analysis strategies is another major challenge. These are just some of the issues we want to tackle so that ANSES can continue to carry out robust scientific work and risk analyses that meet the health challenges of today and tomorrow.