The Canada Excellence Research Chair One Urban Health is based at the Parc Campus, in the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal (ESPUM). It is affiliated with the Research Center in Public Health (CReSP).
Our object of study is at the meeting point of the One Health concept and the World Health Organization Healthy Cities initiative.
Considers the health of humans, animals, and ecosystems as closely linked. This integrated approach aims to find the appropriate balance to optimize the health of all parties.
Healthy cities are based on the implementation of public policies favourable to health and quality of life, and premised on individual empowerment and citizen participation strategies.
The Chair’s team focuses on governance mechanisms involved at the city level, to adopt a One Health approach.
Since 2008, the Canada Excellence Research Chair program has supported Canadian universities by funding research teams led by world-renowned, ambitious, and innovative researchers.
Through an 8-year funding that ranges between 4 to 8 million dollars, this program allows Canada to occupy its place as a leader at the forefront of scientific innovation.
The program is administered by the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS) at the joint initiative of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council , the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Today, more than half of the population lives in the unique ecosystems that cities are, with their many challenges and possibilities for well-being and health.
The One Urban Health CERC mobilizes various disciplines and expertise in the analysis and construction of interventions that aim to make cities more pleasant and favorable for health and well-being.
More specifically, the next years of funding represent many opportunities to explore governance mechanisms within the city and progress towards a One Health approach.
Research projects of different sizes will be implemented . Opportunities will be seized and co-designed with a range of partners hailing from àacademia, institutions, and citizen communities.
The One Health approach originally developed in the heart of the jungle, in response to the spread of the Ebola and Zika viruses in particular, as well as in intensive industry, in the face of epidemics of avian flu or Q fever. The focus was on zoonoses and how to control them.
The One Health approach has evolved, taking a more global view of health, from a planetary and eco-responsible perspective.
In this vein, the One Health Initiative at the University of Montreal takes a local and global approach to actions and collaborations favoring the health of humans, animals, and ecosystems.
The University of Montreal School of Public Health (ESPUM) coordinates the One Urban Health Initiative. It brings together the expertise of different faculties to think about cities through the prism of health and well-being, both physical and mental. It enables researchers from a wide range of faculties (e.g. medicine, veterinary, urban planning, and public health) to jointly elaborate innovative solutions and interventions to address social and health inequalities, as well as climate change.
This favourable interdisciplinary context gave rise to the idea of a CERC. Previous collaborations and interventions withEvelyne de Leeuw made her the ideal incumbent.
In addition toher expertise in political science and public health, Evelyne has been involved in the Cities in Health movement since its inceptionand was a long-standing member of the One Health advisory group for the World Health Organization.
Thus, thanks to some intense collaboration and the mobilization of available forces, in September 2023 the CERC was launched, making One Urban Health a very tangible reality at the University of Montreal.
The CERC offers an interdisciplinary and collaborative space, bringing together researchers from various disciplines as well as institutional, community, and citizen partners.
Thanks to a funding of $500 000 a year for 8 years, the chair aims to study the governance processes in place for a One Health approach in the city.
One of the crucial and founding aspects of the chair is cosmology, i.e., the study of the forces at work in each individual that motivate them to mobilize for a cause (e.g. beliefs, religions, convictions, etc.). This aspect underpins the chair’s singularity to reflect on individual and community governance mechanisms through a One Health lens.
Reporting to the VRRDCI, the CERC’s governance structure aims to be both robust and close to the ground, i.e., to the concerns of the Chairholder. Its main objective is to support the CERC chairholder and her team in the various CERC projects. The CERC’s governance is made up of four main bodies:
View the gouvernance structure
A Global Perspective is considered through an ad-hoc external consultation mechanism. Evelyne de Leeuw benefits from an international reputation and a significant network of universities and partners, including the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia), the Transdisciplinary Academy (Germany), the World Health Organization, the International Union for Health Promotion and Education, and the Swiss Center for Design and Health. If required, this network can be called upon to answer specific questions and issues, or to provide guidance on scientific programming.
A significant part of requirements for the Canada Excellence Research Chairs Program, revolves around Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI).
Within the Chair, EDI goes beyond institutional obligations: it drives the projects’ programming and scientific orientation.
Every project from the Chair is deeply rooted in urban realities and committed to health equity, embodying EDI even when not explicitly labeled as such.
The Chair wishes to question governance mechanisms in place, both within the city and its institution through innovative projects, built with volunteer communities according to their concerns and goals, while respecting their rhythms and agendas.
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Evelyne de Leeuw is the Chairholder of the One Urban Health Canada Excellence Research Chair at the University of Montreal and an Associate Researcher at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
A Professor at the University of Montreal School of Public Health (ESPUM) and a regular researcher at the Centre for Public Health Research (CReSP) in Montreal, she primarily studies the determinants of health in urban contexts, focusing on interactions between nature, humans, and their ecosystems.
As a Scientific Advisor to the WHO’s One Health Technical Advisory Group (TAG), she has been involved in the Healthy Cities Movement since its inception, contributing in particular to its evaluation.
Evelyne has taught and helped set up schools of public health around the world, from Kazakhstan to El Salvador. She has published over 400 peer-reviewed scientific articles, half a dozen scientific books and three novels.
Noémie is the lead coordinator of the chair. She holds two master’s degrees in political science and public health, as well as a certificate in evaluation. Over the last ten years, she has worked with vulnerable populations in harm reduction and health promotion programs, in different contexts (e.g. prisons, french suburbs, shelters for people who inject and inhale drugs). After working in toxicomania research at the CRCHUM , she joined the coordination of the CERC at the University of Montreal.
As Noémie is in charge of Equity, diversity and inclusion considerations at the CERC, she notably works on fostering a favorable and safe environment for every team member. A part of her mission is to facilitate access to the CERCfor people who might not have had the opportunity to join it otherwise.
Cécile Aenishaenslin (DVM, MSc, PhD) is a veterinarian and epidemiologist with post-doctoral training in intervention research. Her projects focus on the development and evaluation of interventions, programs and policies that use a one health approach to prevent and control zoonoses and antibiotic resistance. She favors participatory research approaches with communities and decision-makers and uses a mixed methodology that integrates quantitative (epistemological methods and specifications) as well as qualitative approaches. Her main projects focus on lyme disease prevention, antibiotic resistance monitoring and zoonoses in the Canadian Arctic. She is the director of the One Health Laboratory and a member of the GREZOSP.
Sébastien Lord has a pluridisciplinary training, ranging from urbanism (B.Sc., 1996) to architecture (M.Sc., 2004) and territory planning (Phd., 2009). His thesis on aging in the suburbs received the CMHC Housing Studies Achievement Award. After spending four years at the Luxembourg Institute of Urban Research (formerly CEPS/INSTEAD) as a research officer, he joined the School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture in 2012. He is the director of the Inanhoé Cambridge Observatory on urban development and real estate. His areas of teaching and research focus on daily mobility, residential choices, lifestyles as well as the impacts of socio-demographic changes such as aging and immigration, on the evolution of territories, housing and urban planning policies.
Juan Torres is an urban planner and full professor at the School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture of the University of Montreal. Graduate in architecture and urbanism, Juan Torres’ work focuses on urban design, particularly the environmental determinants of children's daily mobility and the participation of young people in the development of their living environment. This work is being carried out in two main sites, namely the metropolitan Montreal area (Canada) and Guadalajara (Mexico), with the support of local organizations, such as Espace MUNI and several municipalities.
Martin Trépanier is a civil engineer and professor at the department of mathematics and industrial engineering of École Polytechnique de Montréal, an engineering school affiliated to Université de Montréal. He is the holder of the Chair in transportation transformation. He conducts many research projects about intelligent transport systems, urban mobility, transportation planning, operations logistics, data mining and processing of large datasets. Since January 2019, he is the director of the Interuniversity research center on enterprise networks, logistics and transportation (CIRRELT).
After studying genetic biodiversity and science history in Paris, Yves focused on environmental and human microbiology over the course of multiple postdoctoral fellowships. He specialized in the analysis of massive datasets from high-throughput sequencing techniques. Since 2021, he focuses on the development of AI tools in the health sector. He is also an active member of One Health projects at the University of Montreal for data treatment. He is a core team researcher at the “One Urban Health” CERC led by Professor Evelyne de Leew.
Katherine (Kate) Frohlich is Professor at the University of Montreal School of Public Health (ESPUM), as well as a research associate at the UdeM-affiliated Centre for Research in Public Health (CReSP) at the Université de Montréal. She co-holds the Myriagone McConnell-UdeM Chair on Youth Knowledge Mobilization with colleagues from UdeM's Faculty of Arts and Science. Kate is also the Scientific Director of the Institute of Population and Public Health at the Canadian Institute of Health Research since September 1, 2023.
Louise Potvin Louise Potvin is a full-time professor at the social and preventive medicine department at the University of Montreal School of Public Health. She is the scientific director of the Public Health Research Center (CReSP) and the holder of the Canada Research Chair in Community Approaches and Health Inequalities. Her research focuses on community interventions in prevention and the role of living conditions in the production and reproduction of social inequalities. She has edited or co-edited 11 anthologies and 12 thematic issues of specialized journals, and has published over 350 articles, book chapters, editorials and commentaries. She was Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Public Health from 2014 to 2023. She is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. She is the recipient of the 2017 Acfas Pierre Dansereau Award, the 2019 Pioneer Award from the Institute of Population and Public Health of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the 2021 R.D. Defries Medal awarded by the Canadian Public Health Association in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of public health.
Yan Kestens is a full time professor at the department of social and preventive medicine at the University of Montreal School of Public Health and a researcher at the Public Health Research Center (CReSP) where he is the director of the SphereLab. His research focuses on city transformation to improve health and equity. Through a range of innovative and participatory methods, his work seeks to better understand the role of environmental and social determinants in the complex urban health system to support the implementation of successful interventions.
Michèle Bouchard holds a Ph.D in public health - Environmental Toxicology option of the University of Montreal. She is a full time professor at the environmental and occupational health department at the University of Montreal School of Public Health. Michèle Bouchard is also the holder of the Canada Research Chair in analysis and management of toxicological risks. She is also a researcher at the Public Health Research Center (CReSP).
Antoine Boudreau LeBlanc, M.Sc. (Ecology), Ph.D. (Bioethics), is interested in the knowledge-transfer, translation relationships, and epistemological interactions between biology and ethics as well as between science and policies. He specializes in governance ethics and lab eco-sociology applied to data management, multi-actor networks, interdisciplinary consortia, and epistemological violence.
He recently began an IVADO postdoctoral research (2024) at the Neuro in McGill University (Blake Richards, LiNC LAB) with the One Urban Health Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) (Evelyne de Leeuw) at Université de Montréal, and with Social Justice and Artificial Intelligence Research Chair (Anne-Sophie Hulin) at Université de Sherbrooke. His research focuses on health, agriculture, and ecology issues related to the governance of common goods (including data, and knowledge) and on the challenge of strategically and ethically building broadscale interdisciplinary communities of practice. He is currently a lecturer at the Université de Montréal for the Ethics, Health, & Big Data course (2020 to this day) and an editor of the Canadian Journal of Bioethics.
He was a research associate at Simon Fraser University for the Cell Map for Artificial Intelligence (CM4AI) of the Bridge2AI program funded by the National Institutes of Health (2022-2023) and a scientist-in-residence at the Quebec Ministry for Cyber Security and Digital Technologies (2023-2024), working on the conceptualization of the AI development and governance ethics framing.
PhD candidate : Evaluation of the use of participatory science as a tool for monitoring and improving knowledge and behaviors regarding TMD risks and the conservation of the peri-urban park ecosystem in Quebec.
He holds a bachelor's degree in biology from the Université de Sherbrooke (UdeS) and a master's degree in environment and sustainable development with a focus on biodiversity management from the Université de Montréal (UdeM). Upon graduation, he was awarded the Bronze Medal of the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, as well as the UdeM Environment Scholarship. He worked as a naturalist for over 10 years and has always prioritized passing on knowledge to the next generation. A serial entrepreneur in social economy, he founded the Miel Montréal cooperative (urban beekeeping) in 2012, now known as Polliflora. He continued his studies while working as a biodiversity advisor for UdeM's Sustainable Development Unit from 2012 to the present.
In 2019, he graduated with a second master's degree in socio-ecology from the Environmental Economics Laboratory at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO), where he specializes in the governance of urban ecological corridors. In 2021, he completed a post-graduate microprogram in Strategic Environmental Consulting at UdeS. At the same time, he founded Éco-pivot, an urban biodiversity consulting firm whose mission is to reconnect nature in cities. As the instigator of UdeM's Projets éphémères, located near the MIL campus, and the Darlington Ecological Corridor, he has gained expertise in the ecological transformation of cities, particularly through action research.
To document all these initiatives, he is currently working on his PhD in action research through the interdisciplinary PhD program in urban planning and landscape architecture at UdeM, in collaboration with the UdeM Landscape Chair and the INRS Climate Emergency Action Chair, with Prof. Sylvain Paquette and Prof. Sophie van Neste. In 2024, he participated in the Quebec delegation of the Tournée des chercheurs, selected by the Consulate General of France in Quebec. Alexandre is also a course lecturer in Biodiversity Management in the Environment and Sustainable Development graduate program.
Maria Laura Guerrero Balarezo is an architect at the University of Cuenca-Equateur, she holds a master degree in research at the London University College in spatial design, architecture and cities. She is currently a PhD candidate at Polytechnique Montréal under the supervision of Martin Trépanier in a project on gender and urban transport in Canada. She is very interested in the analysis of spatial configurations, human behavior in urban space, the social impacts of urban policy, as well as cartography and geospatial data. cartographie et aux données géospatiales.
Chris (she / her) is an Afro-cosmopolitan: not really from here or there, she lives and questions the manifestations of the colonial status quo wherever she is. Chris has a master’s in public health from the University of Montreal School of Public Health and a PhD in psychology from the University of Cape Town (South Africa). She has worked with several populations experiencing marginalization such as migrating people at the border between the US and Mexico, survivors from the Colombian armed conflict and refugee claimants in Montreal. Her research focuses on coloniality and its manifestations in different social contexts. Chris speaks French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Swahili and is usually the person who misses her bus stop because she's immersed in a book.
With a bachelor's degree in geography and a master's in regional planning and development from Université Laval, Valentina is a young professional with a multidisciplinary background that has touched on themes as diverse as physical geography (climatology, paleogeography, biogeography) and social geography (mobility, migration, sense of space, cultural geography). Her master's thesis, in collaboration with her colleagues, on creative approaches to public space through an exploratory perspective of in situ and pre-project co-creation, questioned and putted into perspective the power dynamics associated with the development of our living environments, and the place occupied by the needs of the citizen in the territorial planning.
Her various experiences, notably as an assistant for the implementation of the International Student Climate Network and the first UniC Summit, as a sustainable mobility analyst with the firm Vecteur 5, and as a professional intern at the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) within the Climate Action Program have enabled her to evolve in a multiplicity of environments and to develop broad skills ranging from facilitation to knowledge mobilization, from data collection and analysis, research and writing, to partnership development and the organization of a variety of events.
Within the new Chair, she will bring her varied background to support the development of research projects that are intended to be real vectors of change, in keeping with the One Urban Health concept, which aims to overcome the silos of scientific disciplines mobilized for the benefit of the health of citizens, animals and ecosystems.
Pierre Boris N'nde Takukam is a research assistant at the Canada Research Chair in Urban One Health. Enrolled at the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal, he is currently completing a master's degree in public health, focusing on health promotion. He holds a PhD in anthropology from Laval University, where he worked as a teaching assistant and research professional. His work has focused on ethnicity, community representations and rationalities related to urban issues and also humanitarian issues related to urban dynamics. He has taught at several Cameroonian universities, acted as a consultant for the evaluation of international projects and programs in Cameroon and Burkina Faso, and collaborated in humanitarian research in sensitive areas with the French Red Cross Foundation. Very familiar with qualitative research, particularly ethnography, he is increasingly interested in the cultural aspects and community practices related to population health, prioritizing ontological and cosmogonic approaches.
Medical physician by training and holder of a doctorate degree in public health, Federico is the author of many publications mainly related to social and health inequalities, as well as food security.
His research interests are the following ones : One health, poverty reduction, intervention research in population health, intersectoral approaches, community development, evaluation of community interventions, health promotion, food security, social determinants of health, social inequities in health, prevention of chronic diseases and environment-specific health approaches.
Sonia is the lead coordinator of Leveling the Playing Field, a research-intervention project. She is completing her PhD degree in community psychology and is interested in the roles of municipalities in supporting children's development. he previously worked in the Growing up in Québec study as well as in the Avenir d’enfants project. Passionate about collaboration and early childhood, she has been supporting stakeholders, organizations, and decision-makers from different sectors for nearly 20 years in taking action and making decisions in favor of the well-being of families and children.
Zoé is a coordinator at the SphereLab and research director for the INTERACT project, a pancanadian collaboration of researchers, professionals and community members aiming to evaluate the impact of urban transformations on health and equity. This project aims to mobilize conclusive data and support local actors to build healthier, more equitable cities in Canada.
Before joining the SphereLab team, she worked in communications and policy research and on local development issues with a community organization. With a master's degree in urban planning, Zoé enjoys thinking about the different ways that the design of our cities can influence health, well-being and equity. As a research professional, she mobilizes experts according to research priorities, she writes articles and grant applications, integrates stakeholders into research projects and imagines new ways to share research results with the general public.
Anne Sophie is a research coordinator at the University of Montreal School of Public Health and a coordinator of the interfaculty initiative in urban health
After working in academic perseverance and tourism, she began studying management and sustainable development at НЕС Montréal. Following her end-of-study internship at the Laboratoire d'innovation Construire l'avenir durablement (CLAD) at the Université de Montréal , she began her current mandate at ESPUM in 2021. It consists of supporting intervention research projects and the mobilization, valorization and transfer of public health knowledge .
