gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: One Health (OH) views human, animal, and ecosystem health as interdependent. Hence, OH surveillance involves systematic, yet manageable, longitudinal data incl. biosample collection from all three domains. This surveillance is crucial for early detection of diseases and rapid response to health threats, but the exact needs and the feasibility of the underlying research infrastructure in Germany are unclear. OH Stakeholders include both the final beneficiaries and the institutions, i.e. people that seek to protect them. Our aim is to identify and characterize OH stakeholders, to prepare and facilitate the establishment of this surveillance infrastructure.

Methods: The first step is to identify the stakeholders according to the definition above and represent them by a Venn diagram resulting in four basic interface groups. The identified stakeholder can either be a part of the interface or, as in the case of the animal-environment interface, the person who has knowledge of the interface. The four groups are then further segmented, e.g. according to OH expertise stemming from professional or leisure time engagement.

An initial characterization of the identified stakeholders considers the role, interests / concern and impact of the stakeholders in the context of OH surveillance. This preliminary and external interest-impact-matrix, which will be updated and refined later based on group discussions and interviews.

Preliminary results: So far, we identified 49 stakeholder groups. They are assigned to the human-animal interface (n=13), the human-environment interface (n=17), the animal-environment interface (n=3), and the human-animal-environment interface (n=16).

Regarding the interest-impact-matrix, we assumed that, e.g., pet owners constitute a stakeholder group with a high degree of interest and high impact on our context. Conversely, e.g., employees working in the field of water management represent another stakeholder group that could potentially have a high impact, due to their professional expertise and capacity to collect environmental data and samples. However, existing literature suggests that this group exhibits low interest in such activities in the absence of incentives. We assume that none of our identified stakeholder groups has low interest and low impact. Furthermore, we found no evidence of stakeholders that can be characterized as high interest and low impact as every stakeholder can provide data and collect biosamples at least of themselves and the environment.

Conclusions: To further design the OH surveillance platform, we need a complete and further adapted interest-impact-matrix. Hence, we will conduct interviews and discussions with OH stakeholders and integrate their views.

When complete, the analysis will identify and characterize a variety of stakeholders in the OH context, including representatives from public health, animal health, environmental protection, government, education and research, industry, NGOs, and community groups.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

The authors declare that an ethics committee vote is not required.