Dogs are the main reservoir of Leishmania infantum and in some countries have been regularly culled as part of government policy to control visceral leishmaniasis. At the 13th Symposium of the Companion Vector-Borne Diseases World Forum in Windsor, UK, March 19–22, 2018, we consolidated a consensus statement regarding the usefulness of dog culling as a means of controlling visceral leishmaniasis. The statement highlighted the futility of culling infected dogs, whether healthy or sick, as a measure to control the domestic reservoir of L. infantum and reduce the risk for visceral leishmaniasis.

The human-animal bond has been a fundamental feature of mankind's history for millennia. The first, and strongest of these, man's relationship with the dog, is believed to pre-date even agriculture, going back as far as 30,000 years. It remains at least as powerful today. Fed by the changing nature of the interactions between people and their dogs worldwide and the increasing tendency towards close domesticity, the health of dogs has never played a more important role in family life. Thanks to developments in scientific understanding and diagnostic techniques, as well as changing priorities of pet owners, veterinarians are now able, and indeed expected, to play a fundamental role in the prevention and treatment of canine disease, including canine vector-borne diseases (CVBDs).The CVBDs represent a varied and complex group of diseases, including anaplasmosis, babesiosis, bartonellosis, borreliosis, dirofilariosis, ehrlichiosis, leishmaniosis, rickettsiosis and thelaziosis, with new syndromes being uncovered every year. Many of these diseases can cause serious, even life-threatening clinical conditions in dogs, with a number having zoonotic potential, affecting the human population.Today, CVBDs pose a growing global threat as they continue their spread far from their traditional geographical and temporal restraints as a result of changes in both climatic conditions and pet dog travel patterns, exposing new populations to previously unknown infectious agents and posing unprecedented challenges to veterinarians.In response to this growing threat, the CVBD World Forum, a multidisciplinary group of experts in CVBDs from around the world which meets on an annual basis, gathered in Nice (France) in 2011 to share the latest research on CVBDs and discuss the best approaches to managing these diseases around the world.As a result of these discussions, we, the members of the CVBD Forum have developed the following recommendations to veterinarians for the management of CVBDs.

BackgroundThe changing professional environment for community/public health nursing practice necessitates competencies grounded in current evidence‐based practice. The Quad Council Coalition (QCC) appointed a Task Force to revise the 2011 QCC Competencies for Public Health Nursing. The goal of the competencies is to guide professional nursing practice, curricula, research, and policy development. This paper describes the process used to develop the revised 2018 Competencies.MethodsA biphasic Delphi technique was used to conduct a detailed examination and build consensus. Four individuals representing community/public health practice and education collaborated to identify and implement a systematic process for revising the QCC Competencies. The process included multiple iterations of review and feedback using consistent methods and tools to analyze and synthesize themes.ResultsThe primary result of this project is the 2018 QCC Competencies document that has strong consensus and provides a coherent voice from professionals on the practice of community/public health nursing.DiscussionUse of current QCC Competencies will strengthen the community/public health nursing capacity to positively impact the health and well‐being of populations.

Recent national initiatives in nursing and public health have emphasized the need for a robust public health nursing (PHN) workforce. In this article, we analyze the extent to which recent national enumeration surveys base their counts of this workforce on the definitions, scope, and standards for practice and practice competencies of the PHN nursing specialty. By and large, enumeration surveys continue to rely on practice setting to define the PHN workforce, which is an insufficient approach for meeting the goals of major nursing and public health initiatives. We make recommendations for the development of new standards for PHN enumeration to strengthen the broader public health infrastructure and evaluate PHN contributions to population-level outcomes. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(S3):S292–S297. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.306782 )