Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Leach, Melissa
• Scoones, Ian

Titel

The social and political lives of zoonotic disease models: Narratives, science and policy

Ist Teil von

• Social science & medicine (1982), 2013-07, Vol.88, p.10-17

Ort / Verlag

Kidlington: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

PAIS Index

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Zoonotic diseases currently pose both major health threats and complex scientific and policy challenges, to which modelling is increasingly called to respond. In this article we argue that the challenges are best met by combining multiple models and modelling approaches that elucidate the various epidemiological, ecological and social processes at work. These models should not be understood as neutral science informing policy in a linear manner, but as having social and political lives: social, cultural and political norms and values that shape their development and which they carry and project. We develop and illustrate this argument in relation to the cases of H5N1 avian influenza and Ebola, exploring for each the range of modelling approaches deployed and the ways they have been co-constructed with a particular politics of policy. Addressing the complex, uncertain dynamics of zoonotic disease requires such social and political lives to be made explicit in approaches that aim at triangulation rather than integration, and plural and conditional rather than singular forms of policy advice. •Zoonoses pose major health threats and complex scientific and policy challenges.•This requires combining mathematical, geo-statistical and participatory models.•Social, cultural and political norms and values shape the development of models.•H5N1 and Ebola models have been co-constructed with a particular politics of policy.•Uncertainty requires plural and conditional policy advice.