Edoro Serge Léon Padonou

University of Montreal

École de santé publique de l’Université de Montréal (ESPUM), PhD candidate in epidemiology, under the supervision of Professor Katherine Frohlich and Professor Marie-Pierre Sylvestre

Thesis: Differential effects of school streets on children’s independent mobility and active transportation, according to gender, family car ownership, and parent-perceived barriers : a multisite comparative study in Canada, as part of the National Active Safe School Initiative (NASSI) project..

Research Interests My doctoral research looks at children’s health through independent mobility, active transportation, and outdoor free play, with a focus on school street interventions (temporary traffic restrictions near schools that have shown promise for supporting children’s freedom of movement and safety). Building on work led by Levelling the Playing Fields team in Montreal and Kingston since 2019, this research is now part of the National Active Safe School Initiative (NASSI), which is scaling up school streets across four Canadian cities: Montreal, Vancouver, Kingston, and Mississauga. Using a social epidemiology lens, the project aims to estimate whether the benefits of school streets are equally distributed, examining how effects vary by child gender, family car ownership, and parent-perceived barriers to active transportation. This work builds on my Master’s thesis, “Who Shapes Children’s Mobility?”, which examined gaps between parent-reported and child-perceived independent mobility among 496 parent-child dyads in Montreal, and the sociodemographic factors associated with these gaps. The findings were presented at the 2026 International Medical Geography Symposium (IMGS) and are also the basis of a manuscript currently in preparation for the Journal of Urban Health

Fun fact about you: Outside of research, I am also a writer: my short story collection Étreinte invisible was recently published by Éditions Légende (Porto-Novo, Benin).