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Zoonotic and vector-borne infectious diseases are among the most direct human health consequences of biodiversity change. The COVID-19 pandemic increased health policymakers’ attention on the links between ecological degradation and disease, and sparked discussions around nature-based interventions to mitigate zoonotic emergence and epidemics. Yet, although disease ecology provides an increasingly granular knowledge of wildlife disease in changing ecosystems, we still have a poor understanding of the net consequences for human disease. Here, we argue that a renewed focus on wildlife-borne diseases as complex socio-ecological systems—a‘people and nature’paradigm—is needed to identify local interventions and transformative system-wide changes that could reduce human disease burden. We discuss longstanding scientific narratives of human involvement in zoonotic disease systems, which have largely framed people as ecological disruptors, and discuss three emerging research areas that provide wider system perspectives: how anthropogenic ecosystems construct new niches for infectious disease, feedbacks between disease, biodiversity and social vulnerability and the role of human-to-animal pathogen transmission (‘spillback’) in zoonotic disease systems. We conclude by discussing new opportunities to better understand the predictability of human disease outcomes from biodiversity change and to integrate ecological drivers of disease into health intervention design and evaluation. This article is part of the discussion meeting issue ‘Bending the curve towards nature recovery: building on Georgina Mace's legacy for a biodiverse future’.
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How market integration impacts human disease ecology
Abstract Market integration (MI), or the shift from subsistence to market-based livelihoods, profoundly influences health, yet its impacts on infectious diseases remain underexplored. Here, we synthesize the current understanding of MI and infectious disease to stimulate more research, specifically aiming to leverage concepts and tools from disease ecology and related fields to generate testable hypotheses. Embracing a One Health perspective, we examine both human-to-human and zoonotic transmission pathways in their environmental contexts to assess how MI alters infectious disease exposure and susceptibility in beneficial, detrimental and mixed ways. For human-to-human transmission, we consider how markets expand contact networks in ways that facilitate infectious disease transmission while also increasing access to hygiene products and housing materials that likely reduce infections. For zoonotic transmission, MI influences exposures to pathogens through agricultural intensification and other market-driven processes that may increase or decrease human encounters with disease reservoirs or vectors in their shared environments. We also consider how MI-driven changes in noncommunicable diseases affect immunocompetence and susceptibility to infectious disease. Throughout, we identify statistical, survey and laboratory methods from ecology and the social sciences that will advance interdisciplinary research on MI and infectious disease.
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- PAR ID:
- 10554241
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2050-6201
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 229-241
- Size(s):
- p. 229-241
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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