Participatory Approaches to Risk Assessment Across One Health Disciplines: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Risk assessments for emerging infectious disease threats are often conducted independently of affected communities. Participatory approaches to risk assessment present an opportunity to integrate community knowledge early in the risk-based decisionmaking process. We conducted a scoping review to understand the breadth of evidence from human, animal, and environmental health disciplines for integrating community participation in steps of the risk assessment process. A systematic literature search in PubMed, Scopus, Ei Compendex, Embase, Web of Science, and Global Health Database identified 4993 articles, of which 138 met inclusion criteria for the review. The types of participatory approaches described in the risk assessment literature varied by degree of community involvement, types of communities engaged, and activities implemented to engage communities. There was substantial evidence from environmental contamination and climate change studies on conducting hazard and exposure assessments within a community-based participatory research model. However, examples of community participation in problem formulation, capacity assessments, data report-back, and pathway mapping were limited. Additionally, the limited examples of community-initiated and community-driven risk assessments suggest a need for improving community involvement from the earliest stages of research priority setting through all phases of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Further research is also needed on adapting participatory approaches for emerging infectious disease risk assessments.