There can be few better illustrations of the need for good science-to-policy pathways than the current pandemic. While many are casting Covid-19 as the warning the world needed to wake up to the threat of animal-to human (zoonotic) disease spillover, researchers had been striking the warning bell for many years.
Had the evidence they presented been heeded, the particular spillover of the SARS CoV-2 virus may not have been prevented. However, it is entirely conceivable that national and global pandemic preparedness and response systems could have been considerably more effective.
As it is, the global Gross Domestic Product loss for 2020 is being put at between US$77 trillion and US$347 trillion. In human terms, the losses are of course unquantifiable.
However, that scientists had evidence about growing pandemic risk and its strong link to emerging and transforming food systems, but that this had not been either adequately or effectively acted upon at national and global policy levels, cannot be put down as their failure of understanding the importance of policy influence entirely.
Bridging the research to policy gap for One Health
Effecting evidence to policy is challenging at the best of times. In the area of zoonotic disease it is particularly so. The emergence and spread of diseases from animals to people relates to the intersections of animal, human and environmental health – and so a collaborative, interdisciplinary and integrated approach (known as a ‘One Health’ approach) to zoonoses research, policy and management is needed. Researchers from different disciplines must work with each other, integrate their findings where necessary and prioritise their ‘asks’ – and that is before any attempts to engage with policy players in not one government department but several, each of which is often in competition for resources with the others. It all makes One Health policy influence a tricky beast.
Attempts have been made to bridge the evidence to policy gap. The Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium (2012-2016), an IDS-led One Health research programme which considered four zoonotic diseases in five African countries, included government partners in each of its country teams. It thus ensured a level of government buy-in from the very start.
The ongoing GCRF One Health Poultry Hub involves government partners too in the four countries in south and southeast Asia in which it is working, as well as in the UK. The Hub is researching the public health risks associated with the intensification of chicken production, with the objective of informing safer and more sustainable ways to achieve in particular Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger). As such, it is working at the sharp end of zoonotic diseases. Avian influenza (bird flu) from chickens remains a significant pandemic threat; the related scourge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), another Hub priority, is named among the World Health Organization’s top ten global public health threats.
Essentially though, government partners remain research scientists, and not necessarily the policy influencers or decision-makers who can ensure the evidence makes a difference. So how to move forward?
One way the Poultry Hub is seeking to get into the spaces often closed to researchers is via its National Advisory Groups. These are country-level boards of high-level influencers from academia, the private sector, regulatory bodies and more. They are constituted with a view to maximising impact, board members being well placed to be intermediaries in policy influence.
Integrating evidence for safer, more sustainable food production
But it is through the Poultry Hub’s online Roadmap Series that plans for policy influence reach beyond reliance on single individuals. In this, key themes relating to food systems, disease and pandemics are discussed by high-level, expert panellists in fortnightly online events, and promoted on social media with the hashtag #PoultryPeoplePlanet.
The ambition is to weave together the diverse One Health threads of evidence provided by panellists and others, and in doing so to identify practical and equitable approaches to meet today’s challenges to health security, food security and food production. A set of briefing papers for each of the Roadmap’s key themes is planned, and strategic steps to achieve the safer, more sustainable chicken and egg production that the Hub is tasked with exploring will be proposed in a final Roadmap output.
The Roadmap Series thus brings key elements for policy influence and impact together in a suite of activities over many months: convening, engaging, involving. The Series is ambitious, and the process is building steadily.
The Poultry Hub is at an early stage in its research, however, the Roadmap is ensuring that relationships are being forged and credibility established to maximise the opportunities for evidence-based policy influence, via the Series, or ‘son of’, when the time is right. It is anticipated that the research findings will then support more in-depth discussions with a wide range of policymakers.
Navigating the politics of evidence – and UK Government aid cuts
Having said all this, as often is the case politics may have the final say. At the time of writing, the exact future for the One Health Poultry Hub is uncertain. Funded by UKRI through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), it has been subject to deep cuts.
The fact that Poultry Hub research aligns precisely with the UK Government’s desire to ‘strengthen the One Health approach worldwide’, as stated in its Integrated Review, or that it contributes to the Government’s expressed wish to ‘build on the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic to improve our use of data to anticipate and respond to future crises’, seems to have cut no ice. As with other GCRF Hubs, it has had its budget cut by at least two thirds in the current financial year.
There is a certain irony that funding cuts implemented due to the current pandemic are devastating a research programme aimed at preventing a future one.
Researchers – more at home in the field, lab or study – have in the past sometimes had a reluctance to enter the policy influencing fray. That argument has largely been won in recent years. Is persuading them to enter a more overtly political one the next necessary step?
The next event in the One Health Poultry May Roadmap Series is on 28 April 2021. Find out more at www.onehealthpoultry.org/roadmaps
