CV Science

Ilaria Montagni Health Communication Researcher

Course and current status

Training and responsibilities. Ilaria Montagni, PhD, has a training in communication and information sciences applied to public health. Her PhD was funded by the European Commission and conducted at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health and Services (Italy) and Sorbonne Université (France).The title of her thesis is “Mental Health in Europe: the need for a common language, standard classification criteria and official communication”. She joined the Bordeaux Population Health research center (BPH, Inserm-University of Bordeaux) as a post-doctoral fellow in 2014. She was appointed as a public health researcher at Inserm in 2025.

Impact. Dr. Montagni works mainly in the field of health communication and mental health health literacy. She is a member of the French-speaking network of researchers on health literacy (Réflis). In parallel with her scientific publications, she develops and evaluates interventions to improve young people's mental health literacy, with a strong societal outreach.

Scientific summary

Dr. Montagni has extensive experience in the design, development and evaluation of interventions to promote positive mental health and prevent psychological diseases. In particular, she has co-created an interactive map facilitating access to mental health care to students in Bordeaux, and she has evaluated an interactive video on depression/suicide risk addressed to this population, as well as an Escape Game on mental health literacy of both students and youth engaged in civic service. Recently, her work on evidence-based interventions and validated scales has focused on children.

She has obtained several grants from institutions like the French National Research Agency and the French Institute for Public Health Research. She is the coordinator of international scientific consortia on mental health literacy, including researchers from Australia to Québec.