Isabelle LAFFONT, elected President of the Conference of Deans of Medical Faculties

On March 4, 2025, the Conference of Deans of Medicine elected Professor Isabelle Laffont as its new president and Professor Marc Humbert as vice president.

Dean Isabelle Laffont thus became the first President of this Conference.

The key points of their program:

  • continue to promote the appeal of university hospital careers in order to revitalize the university hospital model;
  • affirm the role of medical/health faculties in structuring and steering biomedical research and innovation in health;
  • Continue and support lifelong learning, securing the achievements of the reform of the second cycle of medical studies, improving the reform of entry into health studies, and promoting reasoned pedagogical innovation, continuing education, and research in pedagogy.
  • engageuniversity departmentsin the territorialization of training provision and research activities, in collaboration with all stakeholders. This territorial ambition of medical/health faculties is an important lever for transforming the healthcare system and correcting inequalities in access to care;
  • develop training programs for healthcare professions by bringing paramedical training into the university system;
  • Combat student poverty, promote the prevention of psychosocial risks and gender-based and sexual violence, and promote student well-being. These major issues must be given special attention, on a par with that given to students with disabilities.

Bio express: Isabelle Laffont

Isabelle Laffont studied medicine in Paris, where she was an assistant senior registrar (CCA) and then a hospital practitioner at the Raymond Poincaré Hospital in Garches (APHP).

In 2011, she became a professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at Montpellier University Hospital and Montpellier University.

Elected dean of the Montpellier/Nîmes Faculty of Medicine in 2021.

She has clinical expertise in the field of physical and occupational therapy applied to neurological conditions, has developed specific skills in the field of spasticity and neuro-orthopedics, and new technologies applied to severe disabilities and handicaps. She has structured a regional network for care, teaching, and research in physical and occupational therapy across eastern Occitanie.

She has been affiliated with the EUROMOV-Digital Health In Motion Laboratory since 2008 (University of Montpellier – Institut Mines Telecom). She conducts fundamental research on motor control to understand the neurological mechanisms of neural plasticity that underlie recovery after central neurological injury, with various areas of clinical research including technologies applied to rehabilitation. Among her teaching activities, she has been responsible for the Advanced Practice Nursing Diploma since 2018, the REHAB course of the Master's in Health created in 2021, and the "Disability" module of the "Ethics, Disability, Precarity" course in the third year of medical studies.

In academia, she has been a member of the teaching committee for the second cycle of medical studies, a member of the management board of the Faculty of Medicine, and a project manager for the university-level training of paramedical professions. In the hospital sector, she has been president of the Territorial Cooperation and Networks Delegation of the Montpellier University Hospital and a member of the DRCI. She has been a member of the CDD bureau for two years, president of the Monitoring Committee for the Reform of the second cycle of medical studies, and a member of the group on the prevention of VSS/RPS since 2023.

She was president of the French Society of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (SOFMER) from 2018 to 2021 and secretary general of the International Society of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (ISPRM) from 2020 to 2024.

Bio express:Marc Humbert

Marc Humbert is Dean of the Paris-Saclay Faculty of Medicine. He is Professor of Pulmonology at Paris-Saclay University, where he is Head of the Pulmonology and Respiratory Intensive Care Department, Pulmonary Hypertension Reference Center at Bicêtre Hospital (AP-HP). Marc Humbert heads the Inserm University Paris-Saclay Joint Research Unit UMR_S 999 (Pulmonary Hypertension: Physiopathology and Therapeutic Innovation) and the Rare Respiratory Diseases Health Network (RespiFIL). He is vice-coordinator of the European Reference Network for Rare Lung Diseases (ERN-LUNG).

He has been Vice President of Research on the AP-HP Executive Board, President of the European Respiratory Society, and Editor-in-Chief of the European Respiratory Journal. Since 2018, he has been listed among the most influential scientists in the medical field by Clarivate Analytics. He has received numerous scientific awards, including the Descartes-Huygens Prize from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009) and the Eliane and Gérard Pauthier Prize for research into rare diseases (Rare Diseases Foundation under the aegis of the Fondation de France, 2016).

Sources: AEF dispatch