Accounting for One Health: Insights from the social sciences

Where exactly do the social and behavioural sciences fit in One Health?

At its core, One Health promotes multidisciplinary cooperation amongst researchers and practitioners to improve the effectiveness and management of complex problems raised by the interplay of human, animal and environment interactions. Contemporary One Health literature has identified reducing disciplinary barriers as key to progress in the field, along with addressing the notable absence of social sciences from One Health frameworks, among other priorities. Efforts to position social scientists as experts on behaviour change and health decision-making has helped to articulate a concrete role for progressing One Health collaborations. Yet, there are other equally valuable functions the social scientist has in understanding complex systems, like One Health. We make explicit the multiple and diverse knowledge contributions the social sciences and humanities can make to progressing the One Health agenda. Articulating these more clearly invites a broader set of interdisciplinary perspectives to One Health discussions, allowing for stronger connections between sectors, actors, disciplines, and sub-systems. This perspective piece identifies a range of entry points for researchers and practitioners to better utilize the potential contributions social sciences and humanities scholars can make to One Health goals.

What does One Health want? Feminist, posthuman, and anti-colonial possibilities

What does One Health want? Despite its touted interdisciplinarity, to date there has been limited engagement with the social sciences and humanities - in particular with streams of critical social theory that enable a response to this question. In this paper we draw on the critical social sciences to consider how One Health is defined, conceptualized, and positioned, and discuss what we see as vital challenges within One Health that both limit its potential for meaningful change and contribute to a potential for ongoing harm - namely, medicalization, anthropocentrism, and colonial-capitalism. We then advance three areas in the critical social sciences that hold potential for addressing these challenges - feminist, posthuman, and anti-colonial approaches. By doing so we seek to encourage a deeper transdisciplinarity within One Health - one that is open to a genuine engagement with insights from critical social theory and a re-orientation towards more creative and radical re-imaginings in the service of wellbeing for diverse peoples, animals, other beings, and the land.

The emergence of the Biodiversity/Health nexus: making biodiversity a health issue

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, a French epistemic community has forged and promoted a Biodiversity/Health nexus, which legitimizes biodiversity as a health issue. The relationship between biodiversity and health is now part of French local government agendas, after being included in new international programs. Based on observation of this nexus’s epistemic community and 35 semi-structured interviews conducted in France between 2017 and 2020, this article aims to show which actors and groups have been forging and promoting this nexus, and to understand how such an emergent environmental nexus challenges the governance of the present biomedical- and technical expertise-based health system. This article discusses environmental nexus from the perspective of building a new cause by reconstituting chains of causality to “demonstrate” the new problem (Barthe, Politix, 23(91), 77–102, 2010), and the growing importance of integration of concepts as a new ideal of policy-making (Cairns & Krzywoszynska, Environmental Science and Policy, 64, 164–170, 2016). As well as a justification (Boltanski & Thevenot, 1991) of their effectiveness in legitimizing the cause of defending biodiversity, environmental nexuses contain a challenge to recognize knowledge, calling for a change in governance methods in a One Health approach.

Native microbiomes in danger: Could One Health help to cope with this threat to global health?

Planetary health faces an emergency associated with global change. Climate change, the increase in world population and urban concentration, the hyperintensification of productive systems, and the associated changes in land use, among other factors, are generating a risky substrate for global health deterioration. The emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is an example of the problems that this situation can provoke. Several researchers and health professionals have addressed the role of microorganisms, particularly bacteria, in promoting global health, mainly in the past decades. However, global changes have contributed to the extinction of a wide array of bacterial species and the disruption of microbial communities that support the homeostasis of humans, animals, and the environment. The need to protect the diversity and richness of native microbiomes in biotic and abiotic environments is crucial but has been frequently underestimated. The "One Health" approach, based on integrating traditionally unconnected fields such as human, animal, and environmental health, could provide a helpful framework to face this challenge. Anyway, drastic political decisions will be needed to tackle this global health crisis, in which the preservation of native microbial resources plays a critical role, even in preventing the risk of a new pandemic. This review aims to explain the importance of native microbiomes in biotic and abiotic ecosystems and the need to consider bacterial extinction as a crucial problem that could be addressed under a One Health approach.

Context matters: Leveraging anthropology within one health

Anthropologists develop long-term engagements with communities, animals, and the ecosystems they all share. This approach can provide important context that is necessary for One Health research, which may otherwise overlook the perspectives and lived experiences of community members. This paper presents two case studies that illustrate the importance of leveraging long-term, holistic, engagements with communities in moving the One Health concept forward. The first illustrates the complexity of understanding the health of people and animals within the context of environmental change in South India. The second provides insights into how the conservation of endangered species requires considering the entanglements of people, domestic animals, and the landscapes they share with wildlife in Madagascar. We demonstrate the value of integrating anthropological perspectives within interdisciplinary One Health research and interventions to better understand the complexity of systems.

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One Health research should incorporate anthropologists and/or social scientists.

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Anthropology provides unique approaches to improve One Health research.

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Long-term engagements with communities will improve One Health research.

Social insights on the implementation of One Health in zoonosis prevention and control: a scoping review

Background

The One Health (OH) concept has been promoted widely around the globe. OH framework is expected to be applied as an integrated approach to support addressing zoonotic diseases as a significant global health issue and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of zoonosis prevention and control. This review is intended to overview the social impact of the implementation of OH on zoonosis prevention and control.

Methods

A scoping review of studies in the past 10 years was performed to overview the integration feature of OH in zoonosis prevention and control and the social impacts of OH. PubMed and Web of Science were searched for studies published in English between January 2011 and June 2021. The included studies were selected based on predefined criteria.

Results

Thirty-two studies were included in this review, and most of them adopted qualitative and semi-qualitative methods. More than 50% of the studies focused on zoonosis prevention and control. Most studies were conducted in low- and middle-income countries in Africa and Asia. Applying OH approach in diseases control integrates policymakers, stakeholders, and academics from various backgrounds. The impact of OH on economic is estimated that it may alleviate the burden of diseases and poverty in the long term, even though more financial support might be needed at the initial stage of OH implementation. OH implementation considers social and ecological factors related to zoonosis transmission and provides comprehensive strategies to assess and address related risks in different communities according to regions and customs.

Conclusions

Based on reviewed literature, although there seems to be a lack of guidelines for assessing and visualizing the outcomes of OH implementation, which may limit the large-scale adoption of it, evidence on the contributions of implementing OH concepts on zoonosis prevention and control indicates long-term benefits to society, including a better integration of politics, stakeholders and academics to improve their cooperation, a potential to address economic issues caused by zoonosis, and a comprehensive consideration on social determinants of health during zoonosis prevention and control.

One Health: A social science discussion of a global agenda

This article introduces the Parasite issue dedicated to part of the research in social sciences supported by the Domaine d’Intérêt Majeur de la Région Île-de-France (DIM) One Health [2016–2022]. We show how the four papers of this special issue are related. Jérôme Michalon recalls the genealogy of One Health and analyzes it as an “epistemic watchword”. Using antibiotic resistance as a case study, Estera Badau demonstrates how “One Health” results from a series of formulas and the bringing together of a plurality of fields and actors. Nicolas Lainé and Serge Morand show how One Health fits in with attempts already initiated in the colonial period and context. They highlight the need to (re)legitimize local and non-human knowledge, in order to truly decolonize One Health and better prevent epidemic emergence. Finally, Frédéric Keck, Nicolas Lainé, Arnaud Morvan and Sandrine Ruhlmann show how zoonotic reservoir and cultural practices are linked in the context of three specific societies. This paper highlights two main contributions of social sciences: 1) To think about One Health genealogy, how the question is framed and by which actors. The questions of practices, social representations but also of the environment are less present than the issues of human and animal medicine. The Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, even some of its variations such as the “domesticoscene” thus appear to be key elements. 2) To propose methods and tools that make One Health operational, advocating a less asymmetrical view of types of knowledge (scientific, local, non-human) and more contextualized global health recommendations.

Social Sciences in One Health: Insights From Multiple Worlds Perspectives on the Dam Rupture in Brumadinho-Brazil

Concepts that integrate human, animal, and ecosystem health - such as One Health (OH) - have been highlighted in recent years and mobilized in transdisciplinary approaches. However, there is a lack of input from the social sciences in OH discussions. This is a gap to overcome, including in Latin America. Therefore, this paper incorporates recent studies from economics and anthropology to the debate, contributing to the opening of transdisciplinary dialogues for the elaboration of OH theory and practice. As a starting point, we explore the recent case of a tailings dam breach, making considerations about how and why this event was experienced in different ways by the affected Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds. From economics, we show how different theories perceive and impact these different worlds, presenting some existing alternatives to the hegemonic thinking of domination and exploitation. From anthropology, we present the perspectivism concept, deriving from the field of relational ontologies, suggesting there are significant and inevitable disagreements-equivocations-among different worlds. Thus, we discuss how the social sciences can help address challenging factors that need to be considered in health approaches that intend to deal with complex global problems. In conclusion, OH should incorporate social science discussions, considering relating practice to the multiple realities in which a particular problem or conflict is inserted. Overcoming the barriers that hinder transdisciplinary dialogue is fundamental and urgent for an effective approach to the multiple and distinct interconnections among humans, animals and environments.