Risk Prioritization tools for emerging and epidemic-prone diseases: A One Health scoping review

Abstract

Background and Aim: The threat of emerging and epidemic-prone diseases is a significant public health concern and there is an urgent need to work on the prevention and control of these diseases. In view of the limited time and other resources available to the animal and human health sector, it is crucial to prioritize the most essential and critical risk factors and diseases. This scoping review aims to document the available disease and risk prioritization tools by evaluating their characteristics and suitability from the One Health perspective. Materials and Methods: Databases such as PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar were used to extract available tools for prioritization. We compared and synthesized the objective of the tool, methodology and prioritization process of the available tools. Results: A total of six tools, including One Health Zoonotic Disease Prioritization, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Strategic Toolkit for Assessing Risks, One Health Systems Mapping and Analysis Resource Toolkit, Health Hazard Assessment and Prioritization tool, Risk Ranger, are included in this scoping review. Various prioritization methods are available; however, multi-criteria decision analysis is the most commonly used. Conclusion: A thorough analysis showed that different tools employ different prioritizing approaches, including mixed-method, quantitative, and qualitative approaches. The summary of the findings suggests the development of a new robust tool with a One Health approach, which will focus on risk prioritization and disease prioritization.

Keywords

• disease prioritization
• prioritization in public health
• prioritization tool
• risk prioritization