Mixed-method analysis of published national One Health strategic plans

While some countries have formulated national One Health (OH) strategic plans, there is alack of comprehensive overview of their content and no analysis of their potential overlaps or differences. This study aimed to assess the alignment of existing national OH strategic plans with the definitions of One Health provided by the One Health High-Level Expert Panel(OHHLEP) and the Berlin Principles. We conducted a comprehensive search to retrieve existing, publicly available, national OH strategic plans. This involved utilizing relevant keywords in database searches, exploring dedicated websites, and directly contacting governments. Eight national OH strategic plans developed by seven African and one Asian countries met the criteria for inclusion and were analyzed through a mixed-method approach consisting of a qualitative content analysis and a quantitative text analysis. Our results showed that the basic concept of OH, i. e., the interconnections between the health of humans, animals, and the environment as well as the need for collaboration between diverse sectors, disciplines, and public and private institutions, is recognized in the plans. The ac knowledgment and consideration of environment health varied across the individual strategic documents. We also observed that certain OH socio-ecological values, such as animal welfare as well as equity and parity, were overlooked in the strategic plans, with limited recognition of Traditional Knowledge Systems. The quantitative text analysis identified a common semantic and similar pattern in unigram frequencies across the eight documents. However, examination of the 50 most common bigrams revealed great variations in word associations between plans. A more detailed investigation of the subgraphs of terms related to the word "health" suggested varying perceptions of this concept among the different countries. Publicly available national OH strategic plans represent groundbreaking efforts, yet there is potential for improvement in institutionalizing OH. This includes integrating additional environmental and multicultural aspects, as well as novel social values such as resilience and solidarity. This work provides a comprehensive and reproducible assessment framework for analyzing documents describing OH strategies and intends to support future OH endeavors.