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About the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic in the United Kingdom.

About the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic in the United Kingdom.

AbstractThe concept of 'One Health' (OH) has gathered momentum among the public health and animal health communities as an important global policy agenda for drawing together these disciplines to inform urban planning and health security policies. OH research, from a risk governance perspective, is generally concerned with identifying preventative programmes that can minimise the threats posed by diseases at the animal‐human interface (e.g. Corona virus, Ebola, avian influenza, the Q virus, for example). This article, by drawing on examples of disease threats, discusses the multi‐level challenges of establishing OH with a particular focus on urban change. It considers the risks posed by the increasing urbanisation of animal habitats and what this means for achieving OH. The article concludes by discussing why social scientists need to pay greater attention to the concept of OH.

AbstractRecent global threats (e.g. Ebola, avian influenza, the Zika virus) have demonstrated the need for policy makers to focus on the detection of risks at the animal‐human interface. Yet epistemic knowledge across these domains is not sufficiently joined‐up. The article argues that, despite some progress, in order for the policy agenda for global health security to develop towards a 'One Health' model there is a need for integration across public and animal health domains. This article sets out an evaluation framework for establishing knowledge integration across these sectors. The article concludes that although 'One Health may seem utopian, given there are key challenges when it comes to reaching integration, there are important steps that can be taken the short to medium‐term. These include reforms to education and training programmes and interdisciplinary research collaborations. A key determinant of whether One Health becomes a paradigm which frames public policy, and leads to policy and institutional changes to enable public value creation and sustainability, is the presence of an 'epistemic community' that bridges health networks.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the paper considers the level of congruence between contribution analysis and public value. Second, based on the Scottish context, the paper examines how contribution analysis can be used as a method to support public managers to demonstrate value within partnership contexts in times of acute governance challenges (including in times of austerity).


Design/methodology/approach
The empirical underpinning of the paper emerges from strands of applied public sector experience and consultancy with national agencies. The author was a public manager (up to 2013) within a national government agency – NHS Health Scotland. The research is also informed by data gathered as an academic consultant in contribution analysis with national partnership-based agencies (Healthcare Improvement Scotland and Education Scotland, 2013-present) through a series of workshops as part of consultancy activity on capacity building in relation to evaluation methodology and practice.


Findings
Based on research and experience with three national public sector agencies in Scotland, the paper demonstrates how public managers, despite difficult challenges, have adopted contribution analysis and how this has served to facilitate public value.


Originality/value
In a time when public managers are facing acute challenges in demonstrating the impact of their programmes and services due to the dynamics of complex governance systems coupled with the pressure of austerity, this research helps to equip public managers with strategies to enable the demonstration of public value in pragmatic terms.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the governance and policy-making challenges in the context of "wicked problems" based on the case of pandemic influenza.Design/methodology/approach– The case study research is based on an analysis of official documentation and interviews with policy elites at multiple levels of UK governance.Findings– Results of this study show that policy actors regard risk communication, the dynamics of international public policy and UK territorial governance as the main governance challenges in the management of influenza at a macro-level. The paper also serves to identify that although contingencies management for epidemiological issues require technical and scientific considerations to feature in governance arrangements, equally there are key "wicked problems" in the context public policy that pervade the health security sector.Practical implications– The study indicates the need to build in resources at a national level to plan for policy coordination challenges in areas that might at first be seen as devoid of political machinations (such as technical areas of public policy that might be underpinned by epidemiological processes). The identification of the major governance challenges that emerge from the pandemic influenza case study is a springboard for a research agenda in relation to the analysis of the parallels and paradoxes of governance challenges for health security across EU member states.Originality/value– This paper provides a novel interrogation of the pandemic influenza case study in the context of UK governance and public policy by providing a strategic policy lens from perspective of elites.

This article contends that professional cyclists have undergone civilising processes in relation to doping within the sport. Drawing on the theoretical approach of Elias, the author argues that over time stronger shame feelings in relation to doping became part of the social habitus of professional cyclists and doping became increasingly 'pushed behind the scenes'. Yet, contradictions and reversals persisted in attitudes and behaviour. These fractures and discontinuities occurred due to several interconnected processes: the role of suffering within the sport and the nature of mutual identification that developed around it, the specific structure of the figuration of professional cycle sport, and the slowness of a comprehensive and effective monopoly apparatus over the control of doping to emerge and the perceived legitimacy of this. Combined these processes generated a social habitus in which doping only very slowly came to be perceived as shameful and which varied across space and time. Despite this a civilising advance is evident.

This article investigates the UK animal health sector in the aftermath of the 2001 foot and mouth crisis. The article draws together perspectives from crisis management, policy and institutional change literatures in order to assess the extent of reforms since the epidemic. Interviews with government officials and parliamentarians and the analyses of official documentation indicate that lessons have been learned and there are successes in many areas; yet, there remains key aspects of crisis management that have yet to change, which leave the government vulnerable in the event of more wide‐scale foot and mouth outbreaks. The results of the study serve to suggest that post‐crisis change research should consider making more explicit links with the institutional literature on change dynamics.