About this Research Topic

Background

Veterinary sciences include but exceed the study of domestic and non-domestic non-human species. The emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has renewed and expanded the need of “one health” approaches –that is, the study of any biological process that involves interactions within and across species (humans included).

Unintentionally but directly, COVID-19 has changed or may change everything – including veterinary sciences. For example, a field poorly developed before 2019 (bat immunology) is now, potentially, at the crossroads that connect infectious diseases affecting all vertebrates.

Research associated with COVID-19 has facilitated or may promote the development and convergence of numerous technologies, theories, and methods. They include, although are not limited to (i) geographical information systems (which allow the study of actual factors found in the environment), (ii) cost-benefit oriented techniques, and (iii) data-driven (“top-down”) research designs, which identify questions and discover potential problems.

This diversity of perspectives opens the door to both revise earlier paradigms and create (and test) new ones. For example, is “disease prevalence” a constant concept or a permanently changing concept that may be influenced by the surrounding geography? To prevent and control epi- and enzootics, should we focus on the “index case” (regardless of any other factor) or also consider geographic location and proximity to a pre-existing connecting network? To more effectively stop an epidemic or more rapidly conduct an emergency vaccination, should be allocate the same level of resources equally over time and over the whole territory (geographically homogeneous policy) or develop site-/region-specific, time-specific policies that change and adjust to the local and global (geo-temporal) situation? How can we develop new tools –which, today, tend to exceed our professional training?

These are just a few of the numerous questions a “One Health” approach may trigger when we combine new technologies, theories and methods.

Here we invite authors to build interdisciplinary teams and, based on original or published data, develop new questions that, to be answered, require the inclusion and integration of, at least, three perspectives, such as disciplines, technologies, theories, and/or methods. Such questions should involve decision-making and should include objective measures of earlier/less costly/more easily implemented/more effective interventions.

Authors are invited to submit original articles, reviews and systematic reviews, method articles, conceptual analysis, perspective, and other types of articles that address topics within the overall scope of this Research Topic: Interdisciplinary approaches in veterinary sciences after COVID-19.

Areas to be covered in this Research Topic may include, but are not limited to:
- faster/less costly strategies for epidemic control,
- new metrics when emerging diseases include asymptomatic cases,
- revision of earlier/development of new theories or methods,
- educational processes that promote tool development,
- top-down mediated knowledge discovery,
- cross-field learning: what veterinary sciences can teach to other fields and what other fields can teach to veterinary sciences (example, the unique bat immunology).

Analyses to be used in this Research Topic to reach its scope may include, but are not limited to:
- geographical analyses
- time-series analyses
- multi-dimensional/multi-layer analyses

and may use several study designs:
- descriptive analyses
- retrospective and prospective studies
- counterfactual analyses
- quasi-experiment
- natural experiment

Keywords: retrospective and prospective studies, geographical, epidemiology, One Health

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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