One Health. Группа авторов
service professionals and community leaders that jointly identify local health issues, jointly design locally appropriate studies, jointly record results and jointly inform locally appropriate action. A One Health social science approach characterizes the AHRG and enables a detailed and nuanced understanding of the human–animal–environment interface in specific locations. Because of the hyper-diversity that exists across humans, animals and environments in relatively small geographic locations, the group advocates two mantras: ‘small is beautiful’ and ‘one village at a time’. Thus, the researcher-service provider–community leader network that makes up the AHRG combines skills and approaches to investigate human, animal and environmental issues concurrently or sequentially, and supports cross-village learning. The social sciences are purposely embedded into the design of health studies designed and conducted by the group. This deliberate approach allows for a nuanced practical and theoretical understanding of infectious and non-infectious diseases in their local contexts in order to design or influence the provision of health services to their communities. Use of social sciences allows for the deliberate investigation and incorporation of culture, gender, spirituality, economics, ecology, cosmology, politics, history and indigenous knowledge. Through these lenses, family and household structure, gender, land use, food production, domestic and wild animal ownership/usage, religious and philosophical worldviews, traditional and contemporary political organization, cultural communication, local and external economics, personal and collective hygiene and sanitation and gender roles are incorporated into health and well-being projects. It is our experience that these are all fundamental to subsequent human, animal or environmental action. Examples include the following.
Soil-transmitted helminths
Social science was embedded from the very beginning of our soil-transmitted helminth studies. How villages were engaged in the studies was part of their success. Village engagement included: (i) open community information sessions during church gatherings; (ii) social, cultural and gender considerations for human and animal faeces collection, testing, transport and disposal; (iii) feedback of results to villagers through village forums; and (iv) discussion of location and design of water and sanitation actions to reduce parasite transmission. Local actions to improve male and female toilets, including their design and location in villages, were informed by local cosmological designation of ‘male’ or ‘female’ appropriate locations (Harrington et al., 2015; Bradbury et al., 2017, 2018). For documentaries on how social science was purposely embedded in the design and conduct of the studies see: Parasites in Paradise: a Soil- transmitted Helminth Survey in Marovo (available at: https://youtu.be/ZRzg4C7Mmas) and Toilets and Taboos in the Tropics (available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMtc3f6xESU) (both accessed 15 July 2019).
Traditional knowledge of medicinal plants
In the face of large-scale logging in many parts of Malaita, many of the communities involved in the project wanted to preserve areas of the rainforest as a ‘living pharmacy’ to sustain health and well-being for the humans, animals and environment. Social science was embedded throughout this project to document the taxonomy of rainforest plants used by local people for medicine and food. The project worked with local tribal groups in order to document local knowledge of medicinal rainforest plants and create a bilingual book (Kwaio language and English) and set of videos as a health education resource for the community and outsiders. The success of this project was dependent on intimate knowledge of the land ownership structures, local political leadership, gendered knowledge systems, access to remote parts of the rainforest and support for local archive systems at the Kwainaa’isi Cultural Centre. Subsequent action by the community saw the formation of conservation areas designated by local ancestral spiritual decrees that blocked commercial logging as a way to conserve plants and animals in these locations. The conservation areas are managed locally by tribal leaders on their own tribal land and act as an example of the One Health human–animal–environment interface (Esau and the Kwaio Medicinal Plants Project Team, 2015; Atoifi Health Research Group, 2018). Short videos from the medicinal plant project are available at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-m8H163iwTAxHB7bg4JJTfZWlmHyHLSj (accessed 9 June 2020).
Mental and spiritual health and well-being
Colonial history and politics are a constant reality in this ex-British colony. A colonial era massacre in East Malaita in the 1920s involving the Australian military had never been resolved. In 2018, a traditional reconciliation ceremony was facilitated between Australian researchers and local Kwaio tribal leaders to acknowledge the events of the past and plan for the future. Pigs and traditional shell money were exchanged in a sacred site near Kwainaa’isi Cultural Centre. This deeply cultural process required an intimate understanding of culture, gender, spirituality, cosmology, economics, ecology, politics, history and indigenous knowledge by all involved and informed by villagers. This holistic One Health approach with embedded social science methods was able to inform historic and contemporary health and well-being activities implemented at local level by health services in partnership with villagers across the human–animal–environment continuum (Flannery, 2019).
Health impacts of climate change
The AHRG also studies the health impacts of climate change. Villagers living on coral atolls or in low-lying villages experience periodic inundation and loss of productive land as sea levels continue to rise. This reduces arable land and impacts food production. In some villages, the surrounding mangroves are used as toilets. During normal tidal flows, human waste is washed out to sea, but during times of inundation, human waste is washed into areas inhabited by humans and animals. Sea level impacts mental health as villagers become increasingly anxious prior to the high tide season, when they know they will be inundated. This impacts both the living and the dead as burial grounds are inundated and eroded. Because people live on tribal land, most are unable to move and so other responses to sea level change are being considered by the communities rather than migration (Asugeni et al., 2017). See also Adapting to Sea level Rise: a Young Woman’s Story, available at: https://youtu.be/VoDCtcIcAOs (accessed 15 July 2019).
Conclusion
The ‘small is beautiful’ and ‘one village at a time’ approach used by AHRG is a One Health social science means to understand the human–animal–environment interface in these remote locations in order to improve health and well-being and the related services in a scientifically sound and culturally respectful manner. It continues to be used by the AHRG locally as well as through their participatory approach to capacity development in other locations in Solomon Islands.
Case study 3 also illustrates how the combined effects of environmental, human and animal behavioural changes create a cycle of changes in the health of each of these three domains.
Medical anthropology has placed limited focus on non-human species in understanding disease and health (Rock, 2016) and on environmental or ecological anthropology (Moran, 2008). There are some studies emerging on interspecies relations in social anthropology in general and especially in the sub-field of research in ecological and environmental anthropology. One example is Ruhlmann’s work (2018) on highly contagious animal diseases and their spread to other animals and humans. This work explores the complex spaces of veterinary and human medical ethnographies of the herders, coexistence between and meaning of the relationships between humans and their animals, political