The complexity of eco-social systems need to be recognised when designing animal health interventions.
In the past, the social aspects of animal husbandry and cultural livelihoods have not been given enough precedence.
Dr Henning believes that in relation to most infectious diseases in animals and humans it is the behaviour of humans that needs to be modified to reduce the risk of pathogen spread between animal and human populations.
For many cultures across the world, live animal trade is a socio-economic must. The live poultry trade in particular is a valuable system that links producers and consumers, and includes a great variety of 'actors' along the value chain.
Importantly, this same trade plays a key role in infectious disease spread as well.
Research targeting such complex systems requires a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches to be able to come up with meaningful inferences about the key mechanisms influencing system dynamics.
Dr Joerg Henning is leading the University of Queensland component of an international collaborative research project Controlling and monitoring emerging zoonoses in the poultry farming and trading system in Bangladesh: an interplay between pathogens, people, policy.
The project is a collaborative undertaking between the Royal Veterinary College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom, the Chittagong Veterinary & Animal Science University and the Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute.
This partnership will bring together a unique combination of expertise in veterinary epidemiology and modelling, public health, anthropology and social science in order to study avian influenza epidemiology and the live bird trade in Bangladesh, both within poultry and human populations.
A total of $3.6 million has been provided for by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom.
The project has been running since 2014 and has been funded until 2018.
Dr Henning's One Health duck project is a valuable resource to Bangladesh communities.
Household duck rearing as a tool to combat malnutrition and poverty among rural communities in Bangladesh, 2016-2017 has been funded to $143,000 and is conducted in collaboration with the Chittagong Veterinary & Animal Science University and the Royal Veterinary College, United Kingdom.
Funding for this project is provided through the Department for International Development, United Kingdom, as part of a research program on Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia.