Factors that enable effective One Health collaborations - A scoping review of the literature

Abstract

Advocates for a One Health approach recognize that global health challenges require multidisciplinary collaborative efforts. While past publications have looked at interdisciplinary competency training for collaboration, few have identified the factors and conditions that enable operational One Health. Through a scoping review of the literature, a multidisciplinary team of researchers analyzed peer-reviewed publications describing multisectoral collaborations around infectious disease-related health events. The review identified 12 factors that support successful One Health collaborations and a coordinated response to health events across three levels: two individual factors (education & training and prior experience & existing relationships), four organizational factors (organizational structures, culture, human resources and, communication), and six network factors (network structures, relationships, leadership, management, available & accessible resources, political environment). The researchers also identified the stage of collaboration during which these factors were most critical, further organizing into starting condition or process-based factors. The research found that publications on multisectoral collaboration for health events do not uniformly report on successes or challenges of collaboration and rarely identify outputs or outcomes of the collaborative process. This paper proposes a common language and framework to enable more uniform reporting, implementation, and evaluation of future One Health collaborations.

The impacts of collaboration between local health care and non-health care organizations and factors shaping how they work: a systematic review of reviews

“…Twenty-one studies reported on collaboration impacts at a mix of individual and population levels [ 4 , 23 – 26 , 28 , 30 , 31 , 62 , 63 , 67 , 69 , 71 – 74 , 77 , 78 , 81 , 82 , 84 ]. They included evidence on health outcomes and health-related behaviours, service access and quality, resource use and spending, and organization or system-level processes related to collaboration.…”

“…And Liljas et al’s review of collaboration to provide more integrated care for older people with multimorbidity found that no studies examining mortality effects reported significant changes in mortality rates [ 82 ]. Five reviews found that evidence on health outcomes was limited [ 63 , 67 , 69 , 74 , 84 ].…”

“…Some reviews reported qualitative evidence on changes in organizational or system-level processes as impacts of collaboration. These included improved collaboration processes and organizational capacity [ 73 , 78 ], stakeholder buy-in [ 74 ], implementation of policies and programs related to health promotion [ 28 ], and an increased focus on health inequalities in local plans [ 4 ]. Potential negative impacts included increased time commitment and challenges to professional identities [ 67 ].…”

“…Organizations collaborated for different reasons, which shaped how they worked together. A shared vision between local organizations and clear aims for collaboration were commonly identified as factors contributing to partnership success [ 23 , 27 – 29 , 34 , 63 , 64 , 66 , 69 , 74 , 76 – 78 , 80 , 81 , 83 , 85 ]. Involving organizational staff was identified as one route to creating a shared vision [ 23 , 28 , 66 , 76 ]; and a shared vision, in turn, may help with the task of engaging other partners [ 28 ].…”

Evaluating the Integration of One Health in Surveillance Systems for Antimicrobial Use and Resistance: A Conceptual Framework

“…One example is the interdisciplinary team and its network, which were considered as major (and yet under-evaluated) drivers of surveillance effectiveness by the team of CIPARS. Teamwork has been recognized as an important component of effective organizations in different settings, including in health systems ( 39 ), and has been recognized as an important component of successful OH initiatives ( 40 , 41 ). However, the evaluation of this element has been mostly absent in the evaluation tools for surveillance systems, currently available.…”