The SITELM project
The SITELM project focuses on the concept of “residential cost,” which accounts for household spending on both housing and daily mobility based on residential location. This comprehensive approach makes it easier to identify households facing economic strain due to territorial dynamics. For instance, real estate market mechanisms can push certain households away from urban centers, making them dependent on cars and increasing their daily mobility costs. Conversely, these same mechanisms can lead other households to live in small, dilapidated, and poorly heated city-center housing.
Against this backdrop, the SITELM project aims to explore the health and social issues arising from this strain on households, asking: which households are struggling with housing costs? Where do they live, and what is their daily life like within their “living space”? Are there psychosocial and physiological risks—as well as specific health conditions—symptomatic of this strain, and how can they be identified?
To address these questions, the SITELM project proposes a mixed-methods approach, combining methods from the social sciences and the health sciences.
- We will develop two typologies—one of households facing financial strain and another of the areas where they live—based on results from an experimental “housing-related costs” module included in two recent household travel surveys (EMC²) conducted in Grenoble (2019–2020) and Clermont-Ferrand (2022–2023).
- These typologies will enable us to identify households under financial strain across various locations; for these households, we will conduct in-depth qualitative interviews using an anthropological approach, alongside a health questionnaire.
- The typologies will also inform a general population study—focusing on households with children (using an epidemiological approach based on the ELFE cohort)—to identify associations with health outcomes.
- Finally, we will describe the health status of populations residing in the areas associated with these financially strained households, using data from the Système National des Données de Santé (SNDS) and local healthcare provider data (spatial epidemiology).
Beyond understanding how the living environment can give rise to health issues, the project’s ultimate goal is to provide insights that help better integrate the territorial dimension into health policies, and health considerations into spatial planning and development policies.
The SITELM project involves the Laboratoire Aménagement Economie Transports à Lyon (LAET/CNRS/Lyon2/ENTPE) in analyzing the ‘residential cost’ component of travel surveys and conducting in-depth interviews with households facing housing-related strain. Analysis of the ELFE cohort will be carried out with the expertise of the CNRL’s WAKING team, while spatialized health data will be processed at the Laboratory of Biometry and Evolutionary Biology (LBBE/HCL/Lyon 1 Université). A doctoral thesis combining approaches from urban planning and epidemiology will be co-supervised by Jean-Pierre Nicolas (LAET) and Sabine Plancoulaine (WAKING).
Project leaders:
Sabine PLANCOULAINE
Sabine Plancoulaine is a public health and sleep medicine physician, an epidemiologist, and a research director at Inserm, based at the Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon. Her research focuses on sleep and circadian rhythms, their determinants, and associated health indicators (cognitive and behavioral development, respiratory health, immunity, etc.). Her work relies primarily on data collected from the birth cohorts in which she participates, including ELFE.
Jean-Pierre NICOLAS
Jean-Pierre Nicolas is a Research Director at the CNRS and works at the Laboratoire Aménagement Economie Transports à Lyon (LAET) in Lyon. His research focuses on analyzing the interactions between territories and daily mobility, as well as evaluating local public policies regarding transport and urban planning. He is currently particularly interested in “residential cost”—a concept that combines household housing and daily mobility expenses—which offers a systemic perspective on various topical issues concerning inclusive territories, the energy transition, and global warming.
Pierrine DIDIER
Pierrine Didier holds a PhD in social anthropology and is a contract researcher at the Laboratoire Aménagement Economie Transports à Lyon (LAET) in Lyon. Her research focuses on the anthropology of health, specifically examining the practices and mobility of healthcare professionals, access to care, and the impact of health policies on healthcare systems (in Madagascar and France). She focuses on analyzing social, professional, individual, and political practices using mixed methods.
Nicolas ROMAIN-SCELLE
Nicolas Romain-Scelle is a public health physician working as a University Hospital Assistant at the Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive (LBBE) and the Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL). He serves as a biostatistician for the university hospital’s clinical research activities (trials and observational studies) and is pursuing a PhD in infectious disease modeling at the intra-urban scale, drawing notably on daily mobility surveys.
Adam ZOBEL
Adam Zobel is an intern at the Laboratoire Aménagement Economie Transports à Lyon (LAET) in Lyon, as part of his geomatics studies in the “Géonum” Master’s program at the Université Lyon 2. For the SITELM project, his work focuses on characterizing specific territories. His primary objective is to estimate a set of indicators to provide a detailed profile of the areas covered by the two EMC² pilot projects in Grenoble and Clermont-Ferrand (covering factors such as accessibility to services and jobs, proximity to transport networks, and the condition of housing and the real estate market). He also aims to replicate this characterization process across the entire French mainland to support the various workstreams of the SITELM project.
Emilie ADZIMASE
After completing the Master’s program in Biostatistics, Biomathematics, and Bioinformatics for Health at Lyon 1 Université, Emilie Adzimase is pursuing her career as a PhD student within the SITELM project, affiliated with the Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon and the Laboratoire Aménagement Économie Transport. Her research focuses on epidemiology, specifically examining the link between households’ residual income—after accounting for housing costs—and health outcomes in both adults and children. She draws primarily on data from the EMC² surveys conducted in Grenoble and Clermont-Ferrand, as well as data from the ELFE birth cohort.
Malikath DAGA
Malikath Daga holds a Master’s degree in Community Health from the Faculté des Sciences de la Santé de Cotonou and a Master’s degree in Health Services and Clinical Research from Lyon 1 Université. Her work focuses on public health, with a particular interest in health determinants and the evaluation of health interventions. Her experience includes contributing to a territorial health assessment for the “Agglo Pays d’Issoire” Local Health Contract, as well as evaluating the PEPS initiative at the Hospices Civils de Lyon—a program designed to strengthen partnerships between patients and healthcare professionals.
She joined the SITELM project as a health research engineer to contribute to the “Households under strain and health risks” component. Her responsibilities include preparing health data collection tools, conducting household interviews, and analyzing the links between housing costs, living conditions, health, and well-being.