Online Workshop: Developing Multidisciplinary One Health Research Projects for PhD Students/Young Researchers

On June 6th, Associate Professor Tarja Sironen and Post-Doctoral Researcher Ruut Uusitalo from Helsinki University delivered a compelling workshop on developing multidisciplinary One Health research projects. They shared their valuable experiences in executing such complex projects and highlighted the importance of collaboration and communication.

Keynote Insights:

Tarja Sironen:
Tarja Sironen, an associate professor of emerging infectious diseases at the University of Helsinki, is affiliated with both the faculties of medicine and veterinary medicine. She leads a project that integrates life and social sciences across eight faculties to find sustainable and just solutions for global challenges. Her work focuses on rodent- and bat-borne microbes, aiming to mitigate the impact of outbreaks in Europe and Africa. Sironen emphasized the importance of multidisciplinary approaches in research:

"When I started my career, I was just interested in one particular virus, but the more I learned about it and started talking to ecologists, I understood more. Initially, I thought I was doing multidisciplinary research just by combining medicine and veterinary medicine, but that was just a start."

Sironen also highlighted the significance of effective communication of scientific findings to stakeholders and the public, a skill for which she received recognition during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ruut Uusitalo:
Ruut Uusitalo, a post-doctoral researcher, combines GIS sciences, virology, and public health. Her research focuses primarily on Africa, but she is also interested in the distribution and dynamics of vector-borne diseases in Northern Europe. Her activities include designing sampling strategies, conducting fieldwork, performing laboratory analyses to screen pathogens, and utilizing GIS and disease risk modeling methods with satellite-based environmental data.

Challenges and Strategies in Multidisciplinary Research:

Sironen and Uusitalo described two case studies in detail: one in Kenya and the other in Finland, illustrating the challenges of interdisciplinary research. They emphasized the importance of building trust and collaboration with local researchers and networks. Integrating diverse methods from different fields requires significant time and discussion.

Ethical considerations are crucial in such projects, necessitating thorough research into the required permits at various stages, especially when sampling wildlife or humans. Communication and collaboration are essential keys to success in these complex projects.

One Health Initiative:

The One Health Initiative aims to improve the health of humans, animals, plants, and the environment while contributing to sustainable development. It involves predicting and preventing pandemics and infectious disease spread by integrating insights from climate scientists, physicists, natural scientists, and economists. Understanding human behavior is also critical, as noted by Sironen:

"Even if we know something is harmful, we still keep doing it since we are humans. So I think understanding human behavior is more and more important when we do One Health research."

One of their notable projects, GLOBEID, aims to detect zoonotic diseases circulating in Kenya. This session underscored the significance of curiosity, communication, and collaboration in advancing global health research, offering valuable insights from two leading experts in the field. 

03/07/2024