THEMES OF THE SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME
ICAHS 4 aims to present all areas of surveillance in relation to animal health. This includes all animal species and surveillance in food, feed and people, when related to animals.
Surveillance for epidemics & emerging diseases:
- Covid19 impact on animal/ One Health surveillance activities – how to measure, what has been done?
- Dealing with uncertainty in emerging disease surveillance
- How to prioritise surveillance: What is the next pandemic?
- Horizon scanning and foresight methodologies
- Assessment and sharing of early threats/flags/signals
- Scanning the environment and other sectors as early warning
Translating surveillance outcomes into policy, decisions and actions:
- Translating or designing surveillance for policy, risk managers and decision-makers needs
- Risk management/risk assessment interchange and interface
- Everyday surveillance challenges for policy-makers
- Impact of policy change on surveillance
- Rapid risk assessment and prioritisation of risks for policy and decision-makers
- Advocacy for political and financial support for surveillance
- Estimating benefits of surveillance
- Feedback loops and methods to motivate participation in surveillance
- Cost-sharing, value of surveillance, willingness-to-pay for different stakeholders
Cross-sector and One Health surveillance:
- Policy and scientific governance of cross-sector surveillance
- Political, organizational and collaborative experiences with cross-sector surveillance
- Communication and knowledge sharing
- One Health initiatives
- Private/public/academic surveillance partnerships
- Sharing surveillance: objectives, designs, tools, models, interpretation, decision-making across sectors
- Evaluation of cross-sector surveillance
- Experiences from cross-sector working during COVID19
Surveillance data:
- Making best use of imperfect and available surveillance data
- Evaluating and improving the value of available surveillance data
- Big data surveillance
- The need for reference/census/register data to use surveillance data
- Accessibility of science for policy
- Data sharing – trust, availability & accessibility
- Data interoperability
- Participatory data collection methods
Integrating novel methods in surveillance:
- Computer learning
- Artificial Intelligence in surveillance
- Information capture e.g. platforms, devices etc.
- Novel genetic methods and informatics into surveillance
- Innovative operational methods
Glossary and definitions:
Sector = The word is used in its widest form at ICAHS. We consider a sector a specific part of society or the economy made up of similar elements- like the health care sector or the agricultural sector. National economies are often at high level divided into the private sector, the public sector and the non-profit/civil sector. For AH surveillance, some of the relevant sectors could be: animal industry sector, public health sector, academic/research sector, veterinary sector, food sector or the animal specific sectors such as the pig sector or the small animal sector. Each sector will most likely have their own policies, objectives and values and thus, have different surveillance contributions, abilities, needs and interests.
Decision maker, policy, risk manager, surveillance user = At ICAHS 4, these terms refer to the actors, who use surveillance outputs to make decisions about implementation of control within their unit. They include public policy makers, industry representatives, farmers, slaughterhouse management, pet owners, veterinarians and many others.