COHESIVE

COHESIVE: One Health Structure In Europe.

COHESIVE focuses on the ability to pick up, share and communicate signals as well as the ability to conduct joint risk assessments

Working towards a world with less zoonotic disease burden requires collaboration at all levels and between the veterinary and human domain. In some European countries, risk analytical structures to deal with (emerging) zoonoses in an integrated human‐veterinary setting have already been implemented. However, these structures mostly were implemented after experiencing one or more large outbreaks such as BSE in the UK or Q‐fever in The Netherlands. Now, these countries experience the advantages of integrated One Health approaches to deal with (re‐)emerging zoonoses, including AMR and food‐borne zoonoses. Due to very different organisation of food production systems, the veterinary and human health domains, both in and between countries, it must be realized that there is no general blue‐print for a OH risk‐analysis structure. In this context, the COHESIVE project aims at strengthening/improving (structured) collaboration between the human and veterinary domain in the area of risk‐analysis of (emerging) zoonoses in European Member States by:

1. Stimulating One Health approaches at the national level within EU countries (EJP partner member states) and focusing on strengthening human‐veterinary collaboration by designing common procedures and tools while taking into account similarities and differences between countries. Importantly, the project will facilitate in the first step of creating support for a One Health structure by organizing local workshops with national stakeholders.
2. Roadmap towards an EU zoonoses risk‐assessment of risk‐analysis structure by bringing  together existing risk analysis and epidemiological tools, skills and facilities that are required for a ‘one‐health’ surveillance over member states borders, including exploration of the use and possible implementation of early warning systems across Europe.
3. Design and test a common open source platform for the collection and analysis of surveillance and outbreak data on (foodborne) zoonoses. The aim is to provide IT tools and data that are quickly available, usable and helpful in outbreak situations and for risk assessments. Especially tools for tracing, WGS and standardized risk assessments are established, harmonized and improved.  Interoperability with the main data exchange systems at EU level will be ensured such the TESSy platform and the EFSA zoonoses data collection system.
4. Capacity building within and between EU countries at several levels (executive level, communication, policy makers) within the area of zoonotic diseases. Several pilots, within and between countries, will test the developed tools (guidelines for setting‐up a ‘One Health Structure’, risk‐assessment tool, early warning tool, data platform) within country through specific Vet‐Med partnerships. Multiple member states Vet‐Med partnerships will also assess the developed tools collectively on combined country surveillance.

Mangone, I., Radomski, N., Di Pasquale, A., Santurbano, A., Calistri, P., Cammà, C., Maassen, K. (2021). Refinement of the COHESIVE Information System towards a unified ontology of food terms for the public health organizations. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5645680 

Dewar, R., Gavin, C., McCarthy, C., Taylor, R A., Cook, C., Simons, R R L. (2021). A user-friendly decision support tool to assist one-health risk assessors. One Health, 13, 100266. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.onehlt.2021.100266

The COHESIVE project is currently developing guidelines for risk analysis of zoonoses which will be published this autumn.

For more information about our work on these guidelines, see the three infographics below: What, Why and How.