Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
This project advances the American Rescue Act Pandemic Preparedness and Response Plan to investigate and control emerging zoonotic diseases. It seeks to enhancenew interdisciplinary work anchored in animal and veterinary medical sciences to support food and agricultural production. This research develops a new support tool, an ethical framework, anchored in One Health approaches, that bring together diverse perspectives to solve pressing issues and build trustacross the health-agriculture-veterinary nexus. It will identify, map and assess ethical, social, political, biosecurity, economic and interspecies conflicts at the heart of a novel pandemic with the aim of developing a much needed framework to support decision-making. It has three objectives:1. Examine emerging infectious disease (zoonoses) and public health preparedness resources through the lens of interspecies social and ethical determinants of health and welfare.2. Efficiently mobilize and augment research and collaboration networks in infectious and spillover disease preparedness and response to create new understanding across health-agriculture- veterinary professionals3. Design ethics instructional materials in OH animal disease management (OHADM) to strengthen public health and agriculture sector zoonosis preparedness capabilities and repository.Key outcomes of this research will identify and resolve factors that influence trust around animal agriculture or aquaculture, map and address interspecies blind spots, underpin motivated reasoning and strengthen risk communication. The impact of existing preparedness resources and table-top exercises will be explored with professionals from zoonotic/pandemic preparedness, and ethics guided OHADM and stakeholder table-top crisis response exercises will be developed and tested to strengthen inclusion, diversity and equity outcomes and provide flexible tools and educational support mechanisms.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
75%
Applied
25%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
This project will achieve the following key objectives:(i) Examine emerging infectious disease (zoonoses) and public health preparedness resources through the lens of interspecies social and ethical determinants of health and welfare;(ii) Efficiently mobilize and augment research and collaboration networks in infectious and spillover disease preparedness and response by collaborating with health-agriculture-veterinary professionals;(iii) Design ethics instructional materials in One Health Animal Disease Management (OHADM) to strengthen public health and agriculture sector zoonosis preparedness capabilities and repository.
Project Methods
Activity 1:A systematic literature review will be performed to gauge how ethical frameworks, decision trees and concepts have been utilized in outbreaks and what metrics guide right decisions. This will benchmark from the publication of the landmark 2012 National Strategy for Biosurveillance through to the start date of this grant (Sept. 2024).Simultaneously, a review of preparedness and response resources will be performed, includingfrom the CDC, ZAPH, DOE and USAHA and the veterinary and agricultural sectors. Key areas of zoonotic/pandemic planning and response (e.g., surveillance, risk management, public health communications) will be analyzed in terms of thematic areas identified from the PI's WELLANIMAL project. Results will inform Activity 2.Activity 2:Using convenience and snowball sampling, approximately 12 national and international professionals (e.g., epidemiology, risk communication, wildlife management, agricultural production farmers, public health veterinarians, modeling, virology, local and state government) with first-hand working knowledge of pandemic and zoonotic disease preparedness and working within OH, will be recruited andtasked with 1) mapping core issues in zoonosis risk assessment, and 2) determining the key value conflicts, ethical challenges, evidence disputes, professional dilemmas, best strategies in zoonosis/pandemic mitigation. These professionals will refine their pre-meeting responses, identify ethical values important in novel pandemics or zoonotic disease control and discuss innovations to existing resources through a modified version of the "Ethics in Research Cards" activity, a tool designed to support professionals or stakeholders' reflection on the ethical considerations of their activities. Areflexive thematic analysis (RTA) of the plenary feedback will be conducted. Results will inform Activity 3.Activity 3:Drawing on the PIs work on ethical tools and outcomes from Activities 1 and 2, three table-top activities with training guides for OHADM and the health-agriculture-veterinary nexus will be developed. The exercises will incorporate bioethics and biosurveillance decision-making frameworks and tools.