Community and public engagement

Our health and wellbeing is tightly interwoven with the health of animals and the environment around us. Through an integrated ‘One Health’ approach, our researchers bring together experts in veterinary and human medicine, ecology and social sciences to devise solutions to reduce the spread of diseases such as rabies, zika and malaria. The approach enables effective resolution of health questions through an understanding of the complex biological and social, economic, political and environmental contexts in which those questions are embedded.

Community level engagement is central to the approach and our teams work in successful partnership with communities in Africa to control the spread of livestock diseases. For example, Tanzania has the third largest livestock population in Africa, vital to the economic and food security of the rural poor. Our researchers are currently involved in visits to approximately 120 agro-pastoralist and pastoralist  villages, organising workshops 

involving key village-level representatives to map and understand livestock resources and main livestock routes, and to evaluate strategies for community-based participatory disease surveillance (case detection and diagnosis).

Our work in One Health exemplifies the Glasgow approach; starting with the needs of the most vulnerable, and bringing together expertise from across our University to co-develop solutions in direct partnership with the communities affected.