Competencies for One Health Workforce Quality Assurance: Disciplinary Diversity and Consensus in a Global eDelphi Panel
Competencies for One Health Workforce Quality Assurance: Disciplinary Diversity and Consensus in a Global eDelphi Panel
Blog Article
Purpose: One Health is posited as the main interdisciplinary and intersectoral framework for preventing pathogen spillover from animals to human populations in events mediated by the environment.The training of healthcare workers toward a credential in One Health has been hodgepodge, emphasizing soft skills that are indistinguishable from other multidisciplinary frameworks.The hypothesis of this research is that consensus on unique competencies of One Health will emerge through consultative engagement of experts in a Delphi procedure.Methods & Materials: An eDelphi Panel was implemented in June 2021, with invitations to 250 working professionals categorized in a 5-by-5 matrix of subjective disciplines (human health, animal health, environmental health, agricultural health, and other) and institutional affiliation (Africa One Health University Network, Southeast Asia University Network, International Multilateral Agencies, Global Academic Institutions, and other).The first round of the eDelphi was designed for After Sun Mist panelists to sort and rank One Health major knowledge domains, sub-domains, core competencies, and skills.
The eDelphi platform supported comments, argumentation, and debate with the goal of identifying consensus for top ten core competencies and skills.The research protocol was approved as exempt by Institutional Review Board.Results: The panel respondents (40% female, median age group 40-50 years, 78% earned an academic or professional doctoral degree, 50% have more than 20 years of work experience in fields related to One Health; and 25% have earned a credential in One Health) ranked animal science and health sciences at the top of RIAA Turntable Preamplifier 18 major knowledge domains, whereas public policy was ranked low.Surprisingly, the ranking of Pharmacy was mixed considering the significance of One Health topics such as antibiotic resistance.Emerging interdisciplinary domains such as Implementation, Sustainability, and Translational Sciences were ranked in the middle, with comments indicating less familiarity with these domains Conclusion: The eDelphi panel process was effective in mapping diversity of perspectives and generating consensus on One Health domains, core competencies, and essential skills for the next generation of One Health workforce.
The outcome supports the need to implement One Health Workforce Academies with prioritized core competency-based training and assessment for an internationally accreditable Certificate in One Health.