INSERM
INSERM – Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (National Institute for Health and Medical Research) serves as the coordinator of the IMPROVE PRETERM project. As France’s leading public organization dedicated to biological, medical, and public health research, INSERM brings together more than 15,000 researchers, engineers, technicians, and support staff across its nationwide network of laboratories.
The project is led by the Obstetric, Perinatal and Pediatric Life Course Epidemiology (OPPaLE) team, a joint research group of INSERM and Université Paris Cité, based within the Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Statistics (CRESS). OPPaLE’s work spans women’s health during pregnancy, fetal and newborn health, early childhood development, and population-based pediatric epidemiology in France and internationally.
Within IMPROVE PRETERM, INSERM provides scientific leadership and overall coordination. The team offers world-class expertise in biostatistics, causal inference, perinatal epidemiology, and comparative effectiveness research. As coordinator, INSERM ensures that all project activities are scientifically rigorous, ethically sound, and effectively connected across Europe.
Jennifer Zeitlin
Perinatal epidemiologist and Research Director at Inserm, co-leading the OPPaLE team.
My research focuses on preterm birth, fetal growth restriction, and the impact of care quality on infant health, using multinational cohort studies and European data platforms such as EPICE-SHIPS, RECAP Preterm, and Euro-Peristat.
Andrei Morgan
I am a neonatologist and academic clinician, with a research interest in the organization of care for babies born very (<33 weeks of gestational age) and extremely (<27 weeks of gestational age) preterm, as well as their outcomes and the related methodological tools. My research aims to generate knowledge on best practices for the management of births at these gestational ages.
Majda HAMRIT
Anna-Veera Seppanen
Postdoctoral researcher with a PhD in Epidemiology and a Master’s degree in European Public Health. My research interests center around international research, health equity and fairness of health care systems, and focus on health service use in vulnerable populations, including children born very preterm.
Mélanie Durox
Tamara Maziashvili
With a background in public health research, I am specialized in project management and contribute to the IMPROVE Preterm project by coordinating activities, supporting teams, and ensuring that project objectives are met efficiently.
Mihyeon Kim
I am a postdoctoral researcher within the OPPaLE team, currently working on the IMPROVE PRETERM project. In this project, I study interventions aimed at reducing short- and long-term impairments associated with preterm birth and manage the data platform.
I hold a PhD in Epidemiology from Université Paris Cité, where my research focused on the sleep characteristics of each family member, their evolution, and their interrelations.
Soodabeh Behboodi
Dentist with a strong interest in research about childhood outcomes of infant born very preterm. I have pursued specialized training in public health and perinatal and pediatric epidemiology. I currently hold a fully funded PhD position at the Université Paris Cité under the supervision of Professor Jennifer Zeitlin. My thesis focuses on growth outcomes in early childhood following very preterm birth, using longitudinal data from large European birth cohorts. I am interested in meta-analysis, meta-research and causal inference.