About the MGEN Group
With over 4 million people protected, almost 10,000 employees and turnover of more than 2 billion euros, the MGEN Group is a major actor in social protection. MGEN manages the mandatory health insurance scheme subscribed to by professionals under the Ministries of Education, Youth and Sport, Higher Education, Research and Innovation, Culture, and the Ecological Transition. MGEN also provides supplementary individual health insurance available to all sectors of the public, as well as group health and welfare insurance for companies and associations. A global actor in the field of healthcare, MGEN makes a comprehensive care offer available to the population as a whole through its 62 healthcare and support services (health and medicosocial facilities, and medical and dental centres), along with the Paris region’s three institutions which it co-manages and the 2,800 mutual healthcare and support services that it funds in France. Since 13 September 2017, the MGEN Group has been part of the VYV Group.
You’ve been supporting the My Thesis in 180 Seconds operation for several years now. In your opinion, what are the issues involved in training young researchers in scientific mediation?
My Thesis in 180 Seconds is a fantastic way of promoting young researchers’ work, rewarding their talent and making their research work accessible to everyone. Knowledge is a global public good: supporting development of scientific mediation means contributing to the positive evolution of science at the service of one and all.
This is why we’ve supported the project, at local and then at national level, ever since it was initiated by the University of Lorraine. Historically speaking, MGEN is the world of education’s mutual insurance company, and, naturally, we also saw that the project had the same values that we uphold: disseminating technological and scientific knowledge among as many people as possible enables individuals to empower and uplift themselves, so creating a more respectful and inclusive world. MGEN activists are often teachers, and in concrete terms we’ve co-developed an event with the University that has enjoyed great success since its earliest editions: finalists present their subjects to Lorraine’s upper secondary school students before the grand finale intended for all sectors of the public. Hence, at the very time they’re considering their future careers, young audiences are stimulated by the discovery of research subjects and the role that researchers play.
The MGEN Corporate Foundation for Public Health aims to develop and promote studies and research on public health. Can you tell us about the Foundation’s main focuses and achievements?
As a healthcare actor, MGEN focuses on adding to knowledge and thought on public health issues. In this regard, MGEN has developed partnerships on research projects, including with academic teams, the CNRS and INSERM. The E3N cohort for example, which enabled significant advances to be made in the field of women’s health.
Creation of a Corporate Foundation in 2002 was a result of our determination to promote research in order to equip the MGEN Group for its own approach to prevention. It’s composed of a fifteen-person multidisciplinary team. Since 2018, the Foundation has hosted the UNESCO “Education and Health” Chair, which is involved in promotion of young people’s health at international level.
The Foundation carries out research on public health, a key field of investigation for measurement and understanding of health at population level, which include such themes as psychosocial risks, health behaviours, and ageing. Some research is carried out in collaboration with other national and international research teams. The results of such work are disseminated among the scientific community at conventions and in publications, and to a wider audience via its website (www.fondationmgen.fr). Training students in research is also one of the Corporate Foundation’s missions.
In your opinion, what does an event like Science & You – an international colloquium intended for researchers in and practitioners of scientific mediation – represent in the scientific and technical cultural landscape?
We see such international colloquia as invaluable occasions for development of mediation and innovation. They provide opportunities for sharing and encounters fostering exchanges of ideas and practices. Society has a great many issues to cope with owing to the many challenges we are faced with today. Recently, like many other businesses, MGEN defined its raison d'être, in which we state that our mutual insurance company is committed to social progress and health for all. Our mutual collective serves the general interest and we take lifelong care of each other, and it is in this sense that our teams of employees and activists work on a daily basis. All disciplines are actually concerned, not just medicine!
Our participation in this type of event is part and parcel of the more comprehensive partnership that we’re developing with the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation’s departments, and, as it happens, locally, with the University of. Lorraine. As a benchmark professional mutual insurance company, in addition to social protection of sectoral staff, we also focus on developing knowledge and encouraging research and innovation. In this regard, for example, we’re a founder member of the University of Lorraine’s Pierre Janet Centre. We’re also very much involved in scientific mediation via the tools implemented as a result of the MGEN Corporate Foundation’s work, such as the Vocal’iz application on prevention of voice disorders, and also, in highly practical fashion, in prevention of Lyme disease, in the context of a partnership with INRAE. We’ll also be presenting a selection of work carried out by the MGEN Corporate Foundation in the context of the colloquium.