New article by Antoine Boudreau Leblanc (Université de Montréal), Charles Dupras (Université de Montréal), Bryn William-Jones (Université de Montréal), Georges-Philippe Gadoury-Sansfaçon (Université de Sherbrooke, Université de Montréal), Josianne Barrette-Moran (Université de Montréal), co-authored in collaboration with their colleagues.

The article, entitled “Safe spaces for co-operationalizing one health: building on momentum in bioethics”, is published in the journal Ethics, Medicine & Public Health. 

Abstract

One Health is, by definition, an interdisciplinary, intersectoral, and interlocal concept. At its origin, it intersects human and veterinary medicine to bridge local-to-global health issues. Local epidemics can escalate into pandemics, while antimicrobial resistance in one species can spread within the microbiotic community. This ecological turn has expanded the scope of health research and practice, which now frequently includes wildlife and landscape. Yet, this expanded scope raises several concerns, starting with the need to build functional mechanisms for interdisciplinary integration, cooperation, and coordination. How do we integrate without reducing, influencing, or (op)pressing disciplinary expertise? One Health, we suggest, is challenged by the same issues faced by other interdisciplinary movements, such as Bioethics. The root of the problem, we argue, is with an organization of science that still dichotomizes knowledge and values in daily practice; pinpointing four core challenges, all of which intersect a boundary: (1) institutions, (2) epistemologies, (3) sectors, and 4) generations. Building on the case of the Université de Montréal, which adopted One Health as a strategic vision for the institution, and the experience of early adopters in the School of Public Health, we argue for a new focus on “boundary intersections” of research, teaching, and service in governance ethics. This model takes the form of a real-world “living laboratory,” structured as a Science for Society collective, and shows how interests can converge across One Health and Bioethics to enable researchers to exchange, learn, and construct a more general methodological approach to operationalize interdisciplinary perspectives effectively in practice.