Strategic Plan

Through stimulation and performance of cross-sectoral research and integrative activities among national reference institutions, the EOHA wants to contribute to strengthening the joint EU capacity to prevent, detect and respond to emerging zoonotic infections and AMR. For this, strategic links will be pursued with key European stakeholders, especially ECDC and EFSA. Both agencies emphasise the need for coordinated actions and capacity building among EU countries to improve all aspects of One Health (risk assessment, response, surveillance, etc.).  Also, the EOHA aims to provide an interface in between several EU initiatives endorsing but not fully covering the One Health approach, such as the European Partnerships (EUP) Animal Health & Welfare, Sustainable Food Systems, One Health AMR, and Biodiversa, and several EU4Health projects, in order to facilitate and promote One Health collaboration.

The EOHA has established experience of cross-sectoral collaborations across a wide range of disciplines and is well placed to provide this expertise at the global level. The European One Health Association strives to step up to this global challenge and connect with the relevant international community to share European experience globally, see appendix 2 for a detailed strategy for the interaction between EOHA and its stakeholders.

Integrated cross-sectoral research at the interface of humans, animals and the environment are essential to improving prevention, detection and control of zoonoses and AMR. Therefore, research on One Health topics as well as the development of transferable research skills and expertise remains at the heart of the Association. Dissemination of the results of One Health research through various channels, such as scientific publications and the EOHA website, is of self-evident importance for the pursuit of the different goals of the Association. Scientific meetings provide a spotlight for the Associations activities and opportunities for expansion and extension of the network. These meetings not only provide the networks scientists with the opportunities to disseminate research findings, but encourage engagement with other scientific experts at the European and global level as well as with stakeholders.

Cross-sectoral exchange of information and comparison of data between national reference laboratories in the public health, animal health and food safety sectors is often hampered by differences in approaches and methodologies used for surveillance, laboratory tests, data analyses and risk assessment. For this reason, the EOHA stimulates the sharing of expertise (i.e. knowledge, skills, techniques) and the harmonization of approaches and methodologies among public health, veterinary and food institutions in Europe. This is in line with the ambitions of EFSA, ECDC and the other European Agencies (see their Cross-Agencies Task Force), and by the Quadripartite (see One Health Joint Plan of Action), to share best One Health practices and to harmonize methodologies and to build capacity in scientific assessment, investigation and knowledge. The One Health EJP project has made a significant progress in proposing tools to encourage the One Health approach at various levels: in surveillance programmes, at the laboratory level, for risk assessment and alert systems, and risk management. The Association plans to further disseminate and promote the One Health EJP outcomes as practical tools to strengthen its partners’ ‘onehealthness’.

EOHA will focus on activities that are complementary to those performed by the EU reference laboratories or conducted in European projects or Horizon Europe Partnership Programmes. By sharing expertise and harmonization of methodologies, EOHA will contribute to the reinforcement of the joint EU capacity to prevent, detect and respond to emerging zoonotic infections and antimicrobial resistance.

In most European countries, public and animal health laboratories including those that perform solely food safety and environmental research are in separate scientific areas, resulting in suboptimal use of resources and interaction between systems (databases, procedures, intervention strategies, etc.) and in redundancy in research activities. As a consequence, the current approach for prevention, detection and control of emerging zoonoses and AMR is not sufficiently efficient and should be improved. Both for public health, animal health and food safety, national reference laboratories for infectious agents/diseases and AMR are available. These institutes are part of one or more European networks, often financially supported by the European Commission (EC). However, most of these networks are established within their respective sectors (public health versus veterinary-food), largely driven by the European legislative framework. The strategies of both EFSA and ECDC aim towards an improved intersectoral integration (6,7). Accordingly, the EOHA aims to bring together these national reference institutions, to encourage integration of their scientific research activities, harmonization of their methodologies and sharing of data, and thus to enhance their joint capacity for prevention, detection and control by following a One Health approach. Expansion of collaborations towards environmental science institutions as well as academic establishments that perform reference functions within national structures for preparedness, detection and response, will allow essential extension of expertise, knowledge, capacity and capabilities.