Governing Towards ‘One Health’: Establishing Knowledge Integration in Global Health Security Governance

Abstract

Recent global threats (e.g. Ebola, avian influenza, the Zika virus) have demonstrated the need for policy makers to focus on the detection of risks at the animal‐human interface. Yet epistemic knowledge across these domains is not sufficiently joined‐up. The article argues that, despite some progress, in order for the policy agenda for global health security to develop towards a ‘One Health’ model there is a need for integration across public and animal health domains. This article sets out an evaluation framework for establishing knowledge integration across these sectors. The article concludes that although ‘One Health may seem utopian, given there are key challenges when it comes to reaching integration, there are important steps that can be taken the short to medium‐term. These include reforms to education and training programmes and interdisciplinary research collaborations. A key determinant of whether One Health becomes a paradigm which frames public policy, and leads to policy and institutional changes to enable public value creation and sustainability, is the presence of an ‘epistemic community’ that bridges health networks.

Who could be One Health Activist at the community level?: A case for India

“…The operationalization of OH is highly dependent on the development of intersectoral collaboration strategies among all the relevant stakeholders at the global, national, and local levels [38][39][40]. However, this intersectoral collaboration until now is an elusive paradigm [41,42], especially at the grass-root level of implementation.…”

“…As the current OH operational strategies emphasize the education and training programs including the interdisciplinary research collaborations [38], the scope needs to be extended to train these CHWs to become OHAs. Although CHWs were trained for the selected zoonoses or participated in the zoonoses campaigning in the local setting, they urged for more intense OH training before being captivated as OHAs.…”

Global Crisis Leadership for Disease‐Induced Threats: One Health and Urbanisation

“…The claim to expertise provides such networks with a potentially significant role in providing lessons for policy makers on how to address complex policy issues. The jury is still out on whether the OH movement can be defined as an epistemic community (see Connolly, 2017) and the evaluation of the effectiveness and the outcomes of OH initiatives, which take account of the multi‐factorial and systems‐based nature of interventions, is in its infancy and remains a matter for future research (Rüegg et al, 2017).…”

“…including Ebola, HIV, and influenza) have an animal origin and, on average, there are five new human diseases that emerge every year and, of these, three are of animal origin (OIE, 2019). Managing zoonoses is one of the most pressing and complex challenges for modern risk governance given they have severe social, environmental, political and economic implications but the degree of success in managing such risks dependence heavily on political priorities and governance capacities (Connolly, 2017). These acute challenges have contributed to the emergence of the OH agenda, which has gained increasing traction in global health security since the turn of the millennium.…”

Something wicked this way comes: How well did UK newspapers support the public debate of Avian Influenza as a wicked problem?

“…The disease will be a devastating blow to many of the estimated 2m families involved in Thailand's poultry industry, until now the world's fourth-largest chicken exporter Financial Times, 26/01/2004 I blame greedy supermarkets for unwittingly causing avian flu by putting pressure on Asian poultry farmers to produce the cheapest birds, at the same time destroying the UK poultry industry, where hygiene, animal welfare and EU standards have always been paramount The Times, 18/10/2005 Politicians may also need to protect the interests of wild birds, if avian flu hysteria mounts. There have already been ill-informed calls in Asia and eastern Europe for culls of migratory birds Financial Times, 24/02/2006 The nature and diversity of coverage given to Avian influenza by British newspapers suggest that it, like other infectious diseases at the human-animal interface including the current coronavirus pandemic, is best recognised as a wicked problem (Connolly, 2017). Problems qualify as wicked when they are credibly subject to diverse and incompatible problem definitions and causal interpretations (Rittel and Webber, 1973).…”