Dr Michel Poulain

Michel Poulain is Emeritus Professor at UCLouvain, Belgium, and Senior Researcher at the Estonian Institute for Population Studies at Tallinn University, Estonia. He has been President of the Société Belge de Démographie (1984-1990) and later of the Association Internationale des Démographes de Langue Française (AIDELF) (1988-2000). From 1985 to 2012, he was ‘Directeur de Recherche’ at the National Fund for Scientific Research in Belgium. 

Michel Poulain is engaged in centenarian’s and longevity studies since 1992. In this context, he initiated the demographic concept of Blue Zone in 2000 when identifying a region with exceptional longevity in Sardinia. In close cooperation with Anne Herm, demographer at Tallinn University (Estonia) , he launched many investigations to discover similar populations with exceptional longevity worldwide. Doing so he validated Blue Zones in Okinawa, Costa Rica (Nicoya), Greece (Ikaria et the French oversea department of Martinique. He visited more than 90 countries with the same objective, finding new Blue Zones and understanding why their population live longer and better. But he is more involved nowadays on the dissemination of the lessons of the Blue Zones to support post-modern ageing societies.

As the original founder and researcher of the Blue Zones, Michel Poulain is an international speaker, professor, and expert on longevity, having delivered more than 100 speeches, seminars, and workshops on exceptional longevity and Blue Zones worldwide. He disseminated the lessons of the Blue Zones to both the scientific and the larger public. He has been involved in most centenarian studies since 1992, and he is an active member of the International Database on Longevity (IDL) and the International Centenarian Consortium (ICC).

Based on his original work on the Blue Zones and related studies, community-based projects are launched across the globe to change people’s environments so they can live healthier and longer lives. The results of his and related studies help people improve spaces such as their homes, workplaces, community infrastructure such as grocery stores, restaurants, and walkability, as well as the social lives in communities. Thus, Michel Poulain sparked a research area with society-wide and global changes for the betterment of human life.

Michel Poulain’s Blue Zones homepage: https://longevitybluezone.com