Essay: Benefits & Challenges Of Diverse Cultural Perspectives In One Health Approach.

Discuss the benefits and challenges of incorporating diverse cultural perspectives and knowledge into integrated management approaches across all aspects of One Health.

Benefits of culturally diverse perspective in One Health system

According to Friedmann, Son and Saleem (2015) understanding the interrelation between human, animal and environmental health is the central part of the strategy for survival of mankind. One health defined is an approach to designing and implementing program and policies, legislation and researches in legislation where different sectors communicate and work together to gain better public health outcome (Zinsstag et al. 2015). The one health approach acknowledges the correlation between human, animal and environmental health and believes that ignoring one of these areas could impact on the other disciplines of health. As reported by (Webster et al. 2016) several contributing factors are present that impact on different domains of health and cultural practice and beliefs has been identified as one of the predominant factors that influence the various domains of health. People from different culture contains different perceptions regarding health and health management, hence it is important to understand the cultural diversity while incorporating care approach. It would allow the health professionals to introduce care that are acceptable for all (Nelson and Wilson 2018). Hence, incorporating cultural knowledge with one health approach would enable the health professionals to enrich the care process with cultural sensitivity and culturally safe care approach could be introduced in the three domain of health such human, animal and environment. In this regards, this essay aims to argue that there are certain benefits and challenges of incorporating cultural diversity in integrated management approach across one health.

Many of the same kinds of microbes infect human and animal as they share ecosystem they live. Just not the single sector is not able to reduce the issue rather a collaboration of different health (Hinchliffe 2015). The concept of One health initially introduced from the research of zoonoses. However, now it integrated for interconnecting human, animal and environment (Craddock and Hinchliffe 2015). It represented by a complex biological and social system that involve multiple factors and process along with their interaction over time at a global level (Hinchliffe 2015). Therefore, a culturally diverse perspective is a crucial part of One health system approaches since it involves human, animal and environment of different culture. However, due to the lack of literature of one health governess and sound knowledge about culturally diverse perspective, One health system failed to provide adequate care. One health consists of many professionals from different sectors such as animal health, public health, plant health, and environment but due to cultural diversity, the conflict arises from every sector (Zinsstag et al. 2015).

Challenges in incorporating culturally diverse perspective in One Health system

There are certain benefits of culturally diverse perspective in of health system. According to Taylor (2017), value-based care is genuine need of every human and animals where health professionals and care team prioritize need and make them feel comfortable in health premises (Sandøe et al. 2014). Culturally diverse perspective has some social benefits such as it improves the mutual respect and understanding between patient and health professionals from different fields(McElroy  2018). It also improves the relationship between health professionals from a different field that in turn help to effectively detect and prevent outbreaks (Prat, Hayler and Wells 2014). World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) suggested that culturally diverse perspective helps every professional to become transparent to individuals to reduce other public threats at the human-animal-ecosystem (Gebreyes et al. 2015).However, It is beneficial for aboriginal individuals because cultural competence provides them with an opportunity to gain primary and mortality rate decreases (Shallcross and Davies 2014). One health system is especially crucial for indigenous people (Bidaisee and Macpherson 2014). Indigenous people have a long history of the use of natural resources and traditional practices (Shallcross and Davies 2014). However, due to certain outbreaks of diseases, they lose the widespread access to the traditional territories and it affected their well-being (Gebreyes et al. 2015). Therefore, a culturally diverse perspective approach in One health system helps them to effectively address the issue (Craddock and Hinchliffe 2015). Therefore, the sudden outbreak can be prevented which threaten the relationship between indigenous individuals with their land (Bidaisee and Macpherson 2014).  .

However, there are certain challenges that have been identified in the incorporation of culturally diverse perspective in ONE health system. A significant number of health professionals failed to consider culture, especially while providing care to the aboriginal people since they are unaware of certain believes of aboriginals (Craddock and Hinchliffe 2015). One such incident observed in Madagascar plague epidemic (Gebreyes et al. 2015). According to the report of the world health organization, the sudden outbreak of plague causes numerous deaths in Madagascar (Shrivastava. and Shrivastava, 2018.) In Madagascar, when a person dies of pneumonia and plague, they put the dead body in a tomb that opens during the ceremony (Craddock and Hinchliffe 2015). Consequently, the bacteria that present in the dead body transmitted to the individual and contaminated to the healthy individual (Shrivastava. and Shrivastava, 2018.). This traditional causes the death of more than 1,100 people in Madagascar in since August 2017 (Shrivastava. and Shrivastava, 2018.). The culturally diverse perspective has a huge role in managing such huge outbreaks (Bidaisee and Macpherson 2014). Eliminating such ritual can offend the population who lived in Madagascar this work as the challenge (Armstrong,  Armstrong,  and Barton  2016). On the other hand, it is crucial to eliminate such believes for effectively prevent the disease outbreak of plague and collaboration of different sectors is crucial for the managing the issue (Armstrong,  Armstrong,  and Barton  2016). Moreover, lack of infrastructure also acts as the barrier since majorities of health professionals even after acquiring the knowledge are not able to implement in One health system (Bidaisee and Macpherson 2014). Waste management guidelines can be followed by health professional where preventive measures can be taken for disposing of and decontaminated all of the equipment that remained in touch of the dead body (McElroy  2018).

Initiatives for integrating culturally diverse perspective in One Health approach

In order to integrate culturally diverse perspective in the integrated management approach of health care certain initiatives can be taken (Zinsstag et al. 2015). The stake holders of the one health need to be involved in the initiative successfully implementing the cross cultural perspective to the integrated management approach of one health (McElroy  2018).By employing traditional knowledge in the training session, a greater depth of environmental information can be given to the health professionals who are working in the One health system (Craddock and Hinchliffe 2015). The training section also provides the more holistic understanding of relationships among the living beings and their environments (Craddock and Hinchliffe 2015). The staffs from the indigenous people can be recruited for a better understanding of their culture and environment (Craddock and Hinchliffe 2015). It would help them to involve in decision-making and this, in turn, helps the professionals to come up with better interventions (Armstrong,  Armstrong,  and Barton  2016). Pieces of training can be given to the policy makers and governments to acknowledge the importance of cultural diversity and make policies according to it (Craddock and Hinchliffe 2015). Workshops can be arranged for health professionals where they can collaborate work with the indigenous people to gain the insight of their culture (Craddock and Hinchliffe 2015). Experts such as researcher and scientist of one-health approaches can monitor the progress time to time (Bidaisee and Macpherson 2014). Different campaign can be designed where effectiveness of One health model can be described to each health professionals from cultural perspective (Zinsstag et al. 2015). Language interpreter can be recruited in One health for solving the language difficulty while addressing the issue of aboriginals (Craddock and Hinchliffe 2015).

Conclusion:

Thus, it can be concluding that one health model is beneficial for open conversation and beneficial for cross-cultural cooperation. This area is particularly related to food safety along with the control of the spread between human and animals. Culturally diverse perspective is a crucial part of One-health system approaches since it involves human, animal and environment of different culture. Language and knowledge barrier is one of the crucial barriers of implementing the culturally diverse approach in one health system. Therefore, it should be recommended to provide education and training to the health professionals for integrating this perspective. 

References:

Armstrong, F., Armstrong, D., and Barton, L. 2016 . Inclusive education: Policy, contexts and comparative perspectives. Routledge.

Bidaisee, S. and Macpherson, C.N., 2014. Zoonoses and one health: a review of the literature. Journal of parasitology research, 2014.

Craddock, S. and Hinchliffe, S., 2015. One world, one health? Social science engagements with the one health agenda.

Friedmann, E., Son, H. and Saleem, M., 2015. The animal–human bond: Health and wellness. In Handbook on Animal-Assisted Therapy (Fourth Edition) (pp. 73-88).

Gebreyes, W.A., Dupouy-Camet, J., Newport, M.J., Oliveira, C.J., Schlesinger, L.S., Saif, Y.M., Kariuki, S., Saif, L.J., Saville, W., Wittum, T. and Hoet, A., 2014. The global one health paradigm: challenges and opportunities for tackling infectious diseases at the human, animal, and environment interface in low-resource settings. PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 8(11), p.e3257.

Hinchliffe, S. 2015. More than one world, more than one health: Re-configuring interspecies health. Social Science & Medicine, 129, 28-35.

McElroy, A. 2018. Medical anthropology in ecological perspective. Routledge.

Nelson, S.E. and Wilson, K., 2018. Understanding barriers to health care access through cultural safety and ethical space: Indigenous people's experiences in Prince George, Canada. Social Science & Medicine, 218, pp.21-27.

Prat, D., Hayler, J. and Wells, A., 2014. A survey of solvent selection guides. Green Chemistry, 16(10), pp.4546-4551.

Sandøe, P., Palmer, C., Corr, S., Astrup, A. and Bjørnvad, C.R., 2014. Canine and feline obesity: a One Health perspective. Veterinary record, 175(24), pp.610-616.

Shallcross, L.J. and Davies, S.C., 2014. The World Health Assembly resolution on antimicrobial resistance. Journal of Antimicrobial chemotherapy, 69(11), pp.2883-2885.

Shrivastava, S.R. and Shrivastava, P.S., 2018. Containing the 2017 plague outbreak in Madagascar: World Health Organization. Environmental Disease, 3(3), p.74.

Webster, J.P., Gower, C.M., Knowles, S.C., Molyneux, D.H. and Fenton, A., 2016. One health–an ecological and evolutionary framework for tackling Neglected Zoonotic Diseases. Evolutionary applications, 9(2), pp.313-333.

Zinsstag, J., Schelling, E., Waltner-Toews, D., Whittaker, M., and Tanner, M. 2015. One Health: the theory and practice of integrated health approaches. CABI.