Healthy publics as multi-species matters: solidarity with people’s pets in One Health promotion

Abstract

Climate change is contributing to local disasters, and pets increasingly figure in mediated views and responses. By theorizing such responses, we expand on the conceptualization of "healthy publics". In our view, healthy publics can arise from multi-species entanglements, out of which enactments of solidarity may emerge. Such enactments may encompass people with pets, as well as the pets themselves. Such enactments are selective, however, because they highlight certain lives and vulnerable situations while obscuring others. To develop this line of inquiry, we treated a major flood that took place in 2013 as a case-study. Participantobservation, social media, and qualitative interviews informed our analysis. During the immediate responses to the flood, a particular human-animal dyad became emblematic of people helping one another and their pets. As the floodwaters subsided, media reports helped to coordinate a public response to shelter people and pets on a temporary basis. Yet in the months following the flood, housing insecurity worsened for people with pets. With the passage of time, media coverage became instrumental in resolving housing crises for people with pets, but only on a case-by-case basis. Housing security for people with pets, as a policy issue, remains disconnected from planning to improve resilience overall and to enhance preparedness for disasters. Our analysis highlights the value of engaged research in foregrounding policy issues that influence the lives of people and pets. We conclude that, to be healthy, multi-species publics must entertain questions about whose lives come to matter most. The relative health of a public pivots on the extent to which policies emphasize inclusion and equity. By extension, some publics qualify as unhealthy, which could seem like a provocative claim. At this historical juncture, we feel compelled to defend decision-making process that attend not only to differences of opinion, but also to differences in possible ways of being in the world.

How pets factor into healthcare decisions for COVID-19: A One Health perspective

“…The One Health initiative establishes that the health of people, animals, and the environment are interconnected and interdependent [ 18 ]. One Health researchers have called for consideration of the human-companion animal bond as an important factor in the interconnectedness of human and animal health [ 19 , 20 ]. This concept has been extended to the “One Welfare” platform, which asserts that the welfare of animals is tied to the well-being of humans [ 21 ].…”

The everyday work of One Welfare in animal sheltering and protection

“…Access to veterinary care was identified as a critical One Health problem in animal sheltering (Horecka and Neal, 2022) and researchers have reported quantitative metrics on the use of community veterinary services applying the concept One Welfare (Ly et al, 2021), One Health (Hawes et al, 2021) or through initiatives like Pets for Life (PFL, 2021) of the Humane Society of the United States (Decker-Sparks et al, 2018). Rock and Blue (2020) connected One Health to social inequity and thus expanded the concept to pet ownership and housing security. Jordan and Lem (2014) reported that a community veterinary and social services initiative that utilised a "One Health, One Welfare" model promoted empathy in veterinary students, and Panning et al (2016) suggested that this model could improve the health of vulnerable human and animal populations.…”