CONVERGENT

The CONVERGENT project aims to co-construct and evaluate a new strategy for the prevention of tick-borne zoonoses among highly exposed forestry professionals. In a highly controversial context of increasing incidence of Lyme disease, and low acceptability of preventive measures, the question arises as to how to improve the effectiveness of prevention. We hypothesize that one solution lies in enabling people to adopt an active stance in the co-production of new scientific knowledge on this risk, and in the co-construction of prevention practices with specialist researchers. This hypothesis will be tested in three phases. An exploratory phase will involve 8 focus groups with 40 forestry professionals recruited in the Grand Est region by the DHDA association. This phase is necessary to gain access to their social representations of nature and disease, but also to build the following phases of the project. A transformative phase will involve these 40 professionals in (i) an immersive participatory research internship at the Laboratoire Tous Chercheurs, and (ii) an action research workshop aimed at co-developing new prevention practices. An evaluation phase will consist of drawing up and distributing a questionnaire addressed to participants in the previous phases, as well as to a control population of ONF agents working in the Grand Est region. This project, positioned at the crossroads of social psychology, biology, epidemiology and ecology, and supported by the CiTIQUE national participatory research program, aims to provide new, concrete solutions to the problem of tick risk prevention. Thanks to the CiTIQUE and DHDA networks, these solutions can be tested on other scales and with other populations. Over and above the theoretical knowledge they will provide on the comprehensive and psychosocial approach to tick risk, they will also constitute an innovative example of interdisciplinarity around a current, complex and controversial health issue.