Roundtable 5
One Health in context and practice
One Health is a key component of the policy and communications response to AMR. It combines perspectives from environmental, animal and human health and has been applied in a myriad of ways, for example, in the surveillance of microbial resistant genes in water ways, the management of zoonotic disease vectors, and to build alliances for research and practice in human and animal health and food production. In this roundtable event, our experts focus on how One Health is put into action and the insights that have been generated for effective and sustained responses to AMR.
6 July 2022, 3pm AEST
Abstracts and Bios
More than infections, people and animals: One Health Unmasked
Maxine Whittaker
In this seminar Maxine Whittaker will explore the broader interpretation of One Health as an approach. She will elaborate on the collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary aspects of the approach, and its application in working at the local, regional, national, and global levels. She will use some case studies to explore how recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environments influences the approach to understanding the “do no harm” principle when designing and implementing strategies to address health issues or concerns that arise in these intersecting realms. She will also discuss how a One Health approach to delivery of services can be designed to add value for other realms.
Bio: Maxine A. Whittaker, MBBS, MPH , PhD, FAFPHM GAICD is a public health physician and applied medical anthropologist and is presently the Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Vector Borne and Neglected Tropical Diseases at James Cook University and one of the two civil society organizations’ representatives on the Regional Steering Committee of the Greater Mekong Subregion Regional Artemisinin Initiative Regional Steering Committee. A major academic focus of hers is One Health and its application to animal and human health systems and services and social sciences approaches to One Health. She has lived/worked in many countries in Africa, Asia and Oceania, published more than She has published more than 120 peer reviewed publications, h Index of 30, and written several project documents for development partners and countries, policy briefings, briefing papers, book chapters and commissioned papers. Amongst these publications, she was one of the editors and the First and Second edition of the book One Health: the theory and practice of integrated health approaches which has been translated into several other languages, and one of the lead authors of the chapter on social scicnes in each edition. She is now a Senior Editor of the recently launched CABI One Health resources (https://www.cabi.org/products-and-services/one-health-resources-cabi/ ) comprisinf research articles, cases, chapters and more, promoting the sharing of practical experiences, and providing support for education and training. Since 2010 Professor Whittaker has been a Principal, Chief or Co-Investigator in more than $85,000,000 worth of nationally and internationally competitive, industry and other research grants and contracts. Her work in health systems, One Health and social sciences has resulted in invitations to be a member of the Australian Government’s IndoPacific Centre for Health Security and Biosecurity Queensland Ministerial Advisory Group and Chair of the Word Health Organisation’s (Western Pacific region) Technical Advisory Group on Reaching the Unreached. In 2017 she was awarded the Royal Australasian College of Physicians International Medal in recognition of outstanding service in developing countries.
Governing antibiotic risks in Australian agriculture: sustaining common goods through competing stakeholder compliance mechanisms
Chris Degeling
The One Health approach to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) requires implicated stakeholders to contribute to cross-sectoral efforts to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use and improve antimicrobial stewardship (AMS). The implementation of One Health AMR policy is particularly challenging in the context of livestock farming because of the infrastructural embeddedness of antibiotics in some production systems. Mitigating AMR incidence and risks may require the development and implementation of new or more stringent stewardship obligations and the future limitation of otherwise established entitlements and rights. Drawing on Amatai Etzioni’s compliance theory we conducted comparative regulatory analyses and qualitative studies with farmers, veterinarians and representatives of peak industry organisations to understand structural and broader socio-cultural dimension of antibiotic use and AMS compliance in Australian beef and dairy production systems. We found a subtle but significant disconnect between how antibiotic use is conceptualised by farmers and the way in which national and veterinary professional stewardship policies construe agricultural AMR risks. Under the umbrella of national-level restrictions on key classes of antibiotics, veterinarians and farmers are interacting with each other around antibiotic use, but with different problem definitions, operating logics, and compliance mechanisms. These parallel regimes sustain and service distinct and sometimes competing common goods. Advocacy for further reforms needs to account for the embeddedness of the constraints imposed by existing systems such that the need for precaution around AMR should be balanced against the immediate and future costs of the proposed intervention. Greater restrictions on antibiotic use agriculture might help reduce the levels of AMR in humans, but these gains are not an a priori justification for the burdens placed on producers and the non-human animals under their care.
Chris Degeling is Associate Professor at the at the Australian Centre for Engagement, Evidence and Values at the University of Wollongong, Australia. As a social scientist with a background in veterinary medicine – and expertise in qualitative and deliberative methodologies – Chris’ research focuses on the intersection of public health ethics, public health policy and emerging issues at the human-animal-ecosystem interface. Recent NHMRC and Commonwealth government funded projects focus on bringing citizens and service users into deliberation on policy questions surrounding the technological enhancement of communicable disease surveillance systems, pandemic and childhood vaccination strategies and the pursuit of TB elimination in Australia.