Governing towards ‘One Health’: establishing knowledge integration in global health security governance

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.