- About Us
- Research Projects
- Access to Primary Care for Older Adults
- Infectious Math
- Understanding Pandemic Related Moral Distress
- Equity-Based Pandemic Preparedness
- Optimizing Virtual Health
- Pandemics and Borders
- Social Media Use for Pandemic Preparedness and Response
- Women and Precarious Work
- Work conditions of Black workers in healthcare
- News and Events
- Resources
- Contact Us
Why ‘One Health’ needs more social sciences: Pandemic prevention depends on behaviour as well as biology
Published in The Conversation: "Why ‘One Health’ needs more social sciences: Pandemic prevention depends on behaviour as well as biology"
On March 11, 2024, it will be four years since the World Health Organization characterized the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak as a pandemic. And while COVID-19 continues to impact people globally, it is only the most recent in a long history of pandemics with likely origins in animals. Examples include plague, which usually spreads from rodents to humans via infected fleas, and the 2009 H1N1 flu, also known as swine flu due to its origins in pigs.
Given the animal origins of past pandemics, as well as the many recent cases of disease in people linked to animals — such as anthrax, Middle East respiratory syndrome and avian influenza virus — it is very likely that the next pandemic will again originate in animals.