A Participatory System for Preventing Pandemics of Animal Origins: Pilot Study of the Participatory One Health Disease Detection (PODD) System

Abstract

BackgroundAiming for early disease detection and prompt outbreak control, digital technology with a participatory One Health approach was used to create a novel disease surveillance system called Participatory One Health Disease Detection (PODD). PODD is a community-owned surveillance system that collects data from volunteer reporters; identifies disease outbreak automatically; and notifies the local governments (LGs), surrounding villages, and relevant authorities. This system provides a direct and immediate benefit to the communities by empowering them to protect themselves.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the PODD system for the rapid detection and control of disease outbreaks.MethodsThe system was piloted in 74 LGs in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with the participation of 296 volunteer reporters. The volunteers and LGs were key participants in the piloting of the PODD system. Volunteers monitored animal and human diseases, as well as environmental problems, in their communities and reported these events via the PODD mobile phone app. LGs were responsible for outbreak control and provided support to the volunteers. Outcome mapping was used to evaluate the performance of the LGs and volunteers.ResultsLGs were categorized into one of the 3 groups based on performance: A (good), B (fair), and C (poor), with the majority (46%,34/74) categorized into group B. Volunteers were similarly categorized into 4 performance groups (A-D), again with group A showing the best performance, with the majority categorized into groups B and C. After 16 months of implementation, 1029 abnormal events had been reported and confirmed to be true reports. The majority of abnormal reports were sick or dead animals (404/1029, 39.26%), followed by zoonoses and other human diseases (129/1029, 12.54%). Many potentially devastating animal disease outbreaks were detected and successfully controlled, including 26 chicken high mortality outbreaks, 4 cattle disease outbreaks, 3 pig disease outbreaks, and 3 fish disease outbreaks. In all cases, the communities and animal authorities cooperated to apply community contingency plans to control these outbreaks, and community volunteers continued to monitor the abnormal events for 3 weeks after each outbreak was controlled.ConclusionsBy design, PODD initially targeted only animal diseases that potentially could emerge into human pandemics (eg, avian influenza) and then, in response to community needs, expanded to cover human health and environmental health issues.

Participatory Disease Surveillance: Engaging Communities Directly in Reporting, Monitoring, and Responding to Health Threats

“…The AfyaData system in Tanzania and the Participatory One Health Disease Detection (PODD) system in Thailand both apply event-based surveillance models with a One Health focus to community reporting for human, animal, and environmental health events [9,10,22]. These systems leverage the use of trained volunteers (rather than general public crowdsourcing) in local communities to report on health events that range from suspect cases of dengue fever, to disease outbreaks in livestock, to contamination of water sources.…”

“…Identifying how these systems contribute to effective public health action in various contexts will be an ongoing effort. Certain event-based tools can provide concrete case studies—such as when PODD was used to detect and control a backyard chicken outbreak in Chiang Mai, Thailand—and health agencies’ use of syndromic tools like “Influenzanet” and “FluTracking” for monitoring and situational awareness can be documented as successful examples [22]. Health agencies should approach the adoption of participatory disease surveillance tools with the aim of integrating insights from multiple, complementary data sources, recognizing that each have their own underlying populations and data collection methods that contain specific biases.…”

“…Several other systems have been designed with a broad list of symptoms intended to capture a range of emerging infectious diseases in humans [17-21]. Still others take an event-based approach to reporting health threats at the community level, such as the sale of counterfeit or fraudulent medications, food safety incidents, and environmental hazards like poor air and water quality [10,22]. For systems that monitor animal health events, reports may be structured to capture either illness or death of domestic or wild animals and human-animal interactions such as dog bites.…”

The Importance of Citizen Scientists in the Move Towards Sustainable Diets and a Sustainable Food System

“…For instance, engaging with members of the public to assess food fraud or stimulate local food production, and involving citizen scientists in food safety research or monitoring (see Reynolds et al, 2021). Such studies are becoming a possibility as a result of advances in remote forensic and sensing technologies (Dehnen-Schmutz et al, 2016;Yano et al, 2018).…”

A Long-Term Negative Effect of Monetary Incentives On Participatory Surveillance of Animal Disease

“…digital technology, local government agencies, and community volunteers. A total of 296 volunteers from 74 local government agencies were involved in the project [7]. These volunteers play an important role in the PODD system by reporting abnormal animal sicknesses and deaths, animal diseases, animal bites, food safety issues, human diseases, and environmental problems via smartphones.…”