A population approach. The Lyon University Institute of Occupational Pathology in the “epidemiological turn” of occupational health (1950-2020) – Sylvain Brunier, Jean-Noël Jouzel and Giovanni Prete

In France, the increased research focus on the effects of work on health over the last thirty years has sometimes been described as the “epidemiological turn”. This paper shows that this “turn” is in fact a long process, the result of efforts by a wide range of players, and not the direct consequence of the health scandals that marred health policies in the 1990s. We analyse the development of research carried out at the Instituts universitaires de médecine du travail (university institutes of occupational pathology, or IUMT), which were central to the study of occupational pathologies during the twentieth century. Based on the case of the Lyon IUMT, this paper describes how university hospital physicians slowly shifted from an occupational pathology approach to a population approach. It highlights the fact that their research gradually became detached from local occupational risk prevention issues, but remained on the fringes of health surveillance systems.