Ph.D. Candidate Evan Griffith Presents his Research at the World One Health Congress

One Health encompasses human and animal health and the environment, and those three factors are deeply and intrinsically connected in this community. Pastoralists typically live in dryland areas with limited agriculture, so they live off their livestock and are often mobile. Turkana pastoralists depend on their livestock for food, income, social status, and well-being, while environmental and climatic factors, like grazing, water resources, and drought significantly impact livestock and Human health. The COHI measures a community’s overall Health and well-being by collecting data on human, livestock, and environmental health. Griffith started by garnering information from the Turkana pastoralists for the fuzzy cognitive mapping process and developed indicators based on traditional ecological knowledge and expert perceptions—a new concept for One Health initiatives.

“Fuzzy cognitive mapping is used to ‘understand the system’ and drive the indicator selection process for COHI. Then COHI can be used for project baseline, monitoring, or assessment stages,” explains Griffith. “I’m collecting a toolbox of participatory approaches for this to use in the future, tools like fuzzy cognitive mapping, to address different problems and then problem solve together.”

For example, researchers can draw on pastoralists’ knowledge of optimal plants to feed their species of livestock and diseases that most often affect their herds. While COHI indicators for the Turkana pastoralists include such variables as pasture availability, water quality, and infectious disease burden, the tool is designed to be used in other contexts as well.

“The development of the COHI is going to be revolutionary for such communities,” says Amuguni, whose work on gender and One Health has been inspirational to Griffith. “This tool can inform One Health policies and support communities and organizations that are implementing One Health projects to focus on relevant indicators and evaluate their interventions effectively. I am already very impressed with the work Evan has done and the commitment he shows towards improving the lives of humans and animals and protecting the environment.”

Griffith started doing fieldwork as a child, alongside his parents who are conservation biologists and ornithologists working on endangered species management and recovery. As an undergraduate at Grinnell College, Griffith jumped into every research opportunity he could involving animals and conservation. He worked in a microbiology lab studying antibiotic resistance in hog confinements, researched avian hemoparasites in Kruger National Park in South Africa, studied bettongs and other endangered species while interning at Arid Recovery in Australia, and researched yellow-bellied marmots as an NSF Fellow at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.

Griffith considered veterinary medicine as a career path, but also hoped to tie in his passions for conservation, ecology, and research. While visiting a friend in Massachusetts on his way to study abroad in South Africa, he made a stop at Cummings School. He learned about the Master of Science in Conservation Medicine (MCM) program from the Admissions Office. “MCM was the start of my One Health journey,” he says.

That journey at Cummings School has so far spanned more than a decade. During his time in the MCM program, Griffith was especially inspired by the faculty, including Dr. Jeffrey Mariner, who helped to globally eradicate rinderpest in cattle by developing a thermal stable vaccine. This breakthrough overcame cold chain challenges and improved rinderpest vaccination in endemic areas of the Horn of Africa. Participatory epidemiology (PE), a social innovation based on livestock keepers’ disease knowledge, was also developed by Mariner and others during this time, which guided rinderpest control options, like targeted vaccination. Subsequently, PE was used to study and prevent other emerging and zoonotic diseases, including Rift Valley Fever (RVF) and High Pathogenic Avian Influenza. In recent years, Griffith has piloted expanding PE alongside Dr. Mariner to include human-specific diseases.

“One of the reasons I love Tufts and stuck around for a while now is all the mentors and people I can look up to in the department,” says Griffith. “Dr. Mariner and others at Tufts are at the forefront of developing participatory epidemiology.”

Griffith next pursued the dual D.V.M./Master of Public Health (MPH) degree at Cummings School, jumping all into One Health initiatives. He was president of Students for One Health Club, co-chair of the SAVMA One Health Committee, a member of Veterinarians for Global Solutions, and helped start the International Students for One Health Alliance (ISOHA) which is based under the One Health Commission.

While vaccine campaigns are highly effective in Africa, diseases often linger in pastoral areas due to a lack of infrastructure, the socioeconomic marginalization of pastoralists, and the difficulty of delivering health and veterinary services to mobile populations. Previous research has shown that integrated service delivery, such as combined vaccination campaigns for children and livestock, can help address these barriers. As a first-year veterinary student building on research he conducted in the MCM program, Griffith worked to develop a One Health framework for integrated service delivery, combining public health and veterinary services for mobile communities in Turkana, Kenya—research that evolved into his Ph.D. and contributed to One Health initiatives and innovative approaches in pastoralist communities.

Griffith interviewed local veterinary and public health officials, Turkana pastoralists, and non-governmental organizations to understand the county’s funding and service delivery mechanisms and gather perspectives on One Health initiatives. This input helped him formulate the framework for integrating services in the area. He collaborates closely with the local government in Turkana, including the directors of Health, Veterinary, and Environment departments, and One Health representatives in the local County One Health Unit, and credits their support for advancing his work.

“The more I understood about pastoral livelihoods, the social, cultural, and ecological aspects of surviving and thriving in seemingly inhospitable places, I was hooked. Tufts has a long history of working in those places,” he says.

Griffith also participated in other One Health initiatives, including a Tufts student summer program in Rwanda, researching the possible use of drones to deliver vaccines for RVF, (viewed here) as vaccines are difficult to transport and store in rural clinics. He published much of his research, including the RVF study, his findings in Kenya, and additional research into how COVID-19 affected African pastoral communities in terms of food security and other health issues, as well as how One Health policies can make a difference.

When Griffith was invited to present at the World One Health Conference, the Department of Infectious Disease & Global Health, the Dean’s Office, and the Office for the Associate Dean for Research at Cummings School  provided funding for his flight, hotel, and conference fees. “I feel really grateful to Cummings School that I was able to go. Tufts is the place to be for network and support. I’m very fortunate,” says Griffith.

Deeply involved with One Health organizations around the world, Griffith met many of his colleagues, sometimes for the first time in person, at the World One Health Congress, while also making new connections with other One Health experts. He gathered with his fellow editors at CABI One Health, where he is an associate editor, and members of the Network of Ecohealth and One Health (NEOH) to strategize plans for the upcoming year. He is secretary of NEOH and part of their Gender Working Group.

While in Cape Town, Griffith connected with colleagues he had worked with in Kenya, including from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Africa One Health University Network (AFROHUN), Women for One Health, the World Pastoralism Forum, and Ecohealth International, in addition to multiple collaborators with whom he is currently writing a manuscript on the spike in camel adoption as a result of climate change and increased frequency and severity of droughts in northern Kenya and Uganda.

Griffith, along with a colleague from the NEOH Gender Working Group, presented a poster at the World One Health Conference. The United Nations Quadripartite developed guidelines for countries to create national One Health plans with steps that include gender equity in general, but without much detail. Griffith and his colleague developed specific guidelines, including questions, for nations to consider as they incorporate gender equity into One Health plans.

When Griffith delivered his research, the final presentation in the Congress’s section on “Marginalized Communities,” he felt he was able to tie in different ideas and approaches of the previous talks. While most of his slides delved into the nuts and bolts of his COHI approach, one slide he found particularly powerful featured a photo that encapsulated the purpose of his work—of women and children with donkeys loaded up to migrate from Turkana to Uganda as the dry season approached. (See image 2)

 “What happens in terms of health and ecological outcomes based on migration is linked to COHI and indicators used to assess health and well-being, whether in Kenya before the migration or after. To tell a compelling story, the photo does that better than I can,” he says.

After his presentation, so many people approached Griffith about his research, particularly the method of fuzzy cognitive mapping, that he couldn’t eat lunch. He was happy to have connected with the audience and enthused by the reception and excitement around the COHI tool. While Griffith has presented at conferences before, the World One Health Congress was the largest, and felt like a career milestone for him.

“It’s a methodology that people can see applying in their own work. The tool is applicable in different cases and combining different epistemologies. It engages the researcher and community, it becomes a discussion rather than just extracting data—it’s a powerful tool,” says Griffith.

Currently working on the data analysis of the cognitive maps and finalizing the indicators, Griffith will return to Turkana in the spring to pilot COHI. He will also teach in both the MCM and International Veterinary Medicine (IVM) programs at Cummings School. He plans to stay in academia, teaching and researching. Long term, Griffith would also like to explore further transdisciplinary and participatory approaches in conservation and public health, abroad and here in the United States. “I’d like to stay engaged in the community work that I deeply love,” he says.

Turkana County in Kenya and Cummings School here in Grafton, top that list.

Griffith’s World One Health Congress presentation can be viewed here and his “Voices in the Drylands” blog is available here.