CV Science

Catherine Le Galès Senior Researcher, PhD Health Economics

Course and current status

Health Economist, Senior Researcher,

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Catherine_Le_Gales/?ev=hdr_xprf

Since 2014, Deputy Director CERMES3 - CNRS, INSERM, EHESS, Université Paris Descartes : http://www.cermes3.fr/

Vice Chair Commission Evaluation Economique et Santé Publique de la Haute Autorité de Santé, Paris since 2012

Vice Chair High Council for Public Health, Paris since 2011

2008 - 2013, Senior Health Economist CERMES3 Group Leader Disabilities and chronic disease

2003-2007 Assistant Director General Non Communicable Diseases and Mental Health, World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva.

Scientific summary

Current domains of research: Economic analysis of well-being, dementia, cystic fibrosis, rare disease, chronic conditions, children, ageing, families, informal and formal care, health intervention assessment.

Catherine Le Galès carries out research on the well-being of people with vulnerable lives, due to illness or aging. In recent years, scientists have broadened definitions and measures of wellbeing and quality of life, and moved away from narrow economic indicators of income and consumption. Adopting a definition of well-being in terms of capabilities (Amartya Sen), in collaboration with other social scientists, Catherine Le Galès recently completed a research on the family accompaniment of persons with Alzheimer’s disease. Combining several sources and approaches (national quantitative survey, ethnographic observations and interviews…), the empirical investigation emphasizes the disadvantages faced by people with Alzheimer’s disease while also providing information as to which resources and features enhance their capabilities.

Supported by a patients ‘association, the aim of her current project is to better understand what is important for children with Cystic Fibrosis and their families — their objectives and effective freedom to realize them — in order to bring out, in comparative perspective, the economic and social disadvantages that are specific to their daily life. The understanding of the origins of these disadvantages requires an investigation that focuses on the goals, values and the possibility of choices open to these children as well as their resources and entitlements, while at the same time taking into account the difference in each child's circumstances in terms of their respective age and the way they experience their illness. This entails studying what these children do and what is done for them on a daily basis on the one hand, and the ways their parents accompany them in their daily lives and why, on the other. The knowledge produced should help feed the refection of the association or even help foster the debate about improving today’s collective support systems – be they political or organisational – to the different parts of the daily lives of affected families and children (health, education, location, working conditions, financial aids…). This research will also provide flesh for a more theoretical question: the evaluation of the disadvantage of persons (children, adolescents, young adults) living with a disease that might deeply affect possibilities of their development and freedom of choice in life, thus contributing to a unique situation of disadvantage.

Finally in collaboration with AFM-Telethon and two sociologists, she just started a research program to evaluate an innovative professional program of accompaniment of persons living with a genetic and rare illness.