This article explores the multifaceted contributions of sociology to the One Health (OH) approach, which recognizes the inherent interconnectedness of human, animal, plant, and environmental health. It is argued that sociology offers valuable insights at both epistemological and methodological levels. Epistemologically, sociology helps elucidate key OH dimensions such as profound interdependence, multidimensional justice (environmental, interspecies, intergenerational, social, and epistemic), and the concept of the exposome, advocating for a perspective that centers human, environmental and animal health rather than an anthropocentric view. Methodologically, sociology's critical perspective reveals power dynamics and social determinants of health often overlooked by biomedical models. Furthermore, its diverse social research methodologies (e.g., participatory approaches, living labs) facilitate community engagement and co-creation, while its predictive methods (e.g., Delphi, scenario planning) are crucial for forecasting ecological and pandemic risks within complex systems. Overall, this paper asserts that a robust sociological engagement is essential for a holistic, equitable, and effective implementation of One Health, fostering a transdisciplinary approach that moves beyond traditional limitations.
How do we build up a transdisciplinary knowledge to develop the integrated One Health perspective? This article outlines the theoretical and practical path taken by the Italian Sociological Association. It discusses the main steps in this process, highlighting the role of time (the interdisciplinary dialogue has been ongoing since the 1970s), working together (organizing several joint events) pleasure of venturing into uncharted realms of applied knowledge, transcending the limits imposed by epistemic authoritarianism.
Il presente articolo esplora la relazione tra le esperienze infantili avverse (ACE) e la dipendenza, adottando una prospettiva basata sul percorso di vita come quadro interpretativo fondamentale. Lo studio combina un'analisi quantitativa descrittiva di 2227 ingressi nella comunità di San Patrignano (2020-2025) con otto interviste approfondite condotte su un sottocampione di residenti. I risultati mostrano un'elevata prevalenza di traumi – tra cui violenza, negligenza, abbandono e stigmatizzazione – e un esordio precoce di comportamenti di consumo problematici. Le narrazioni biografiche evidenziano come l'uso di sostanze assuma spesso la funzione di coping disfunzionale con emozioni non elaborate, piuttosto che essere il risultato di una scelta individuale isolata. Il contributo propone una lettura processuale della dipendenza, intesa come adattamento a lungo termine a condizioni di vulnerabilità, sottolineando il ruolo della dimensione narrativa e relazionale nei percorsi di significato e di recupero.
Indoor pollution is an increasingly relevant yet socially underestimated public health issue, involving everyday environments traditionally associated with safety and protection. Chemical, biological, and physical hazards interact with housing conditions and social practices, producing cumulative exposures that remain largely invisible and unevenly distributed. Drawing on an integrated perspective, the article combines an examination of major indoor risk sources with a sociological analysis of the social invisibility of exposure, risk perception, and the individualization of responsibility, showing how inequalities shape both vulnerability and responses to risk. The paper argues that the One Health approach should be understood not only as interdisciplinary cooperation but as a transformative framework capable of reconnecting biological, environmental, and social dimensions of health. Conceptualizing indoor environments as everyday ecosystems, the article calls for a shift from individualized and downstream responses toward preventive and intersectorial governance addressing structural determinants of exposure.
Shifting the focus in the One Health perspective from risk management to health promotion, this study investigates organic social farming in Italy as a practical application of health promotion in the One Health approach, suggesting a specific methodological proposal. While One Health is often linked to global threats, this research adopts a "reconstructive social theory" to highlight ordinary practices that generate wellbeing through human-animal-ecosystem synergy. Using a mixed-methods approach and the Dors 2020 tool, 16 organizations were analyzed. Results show that while explicit knowledge of One Health is limited, its principles of integration and empowerment are deeply rooted in the principles of their daily activities. The study confirms that organic social farms are effective "good practices" for public health promotion in the One Health perspective. It emphasizes the need for further promoting scientific tools to validate these shadowed experiences within national health agendas from a public sociology perspective.
The World Health Organization (WHO), together with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH)—collectively known as the Quadripartite—adopted the One Health definition developed by the One Health High-Level Expert Panel (OHHLEP) in 2021. The Quadripartite operationalizes this vision through the One Health Joint Plan of Action (OH JPA 2022–2026). WHO/Europe, together with the Regional Quadripartite coordination mechanism and national partners such as the Italian Ministry of Health, has developed initiatives ranging from workforce development to youth education. The forthcoming Global Curriculum on One Health exemplifies a structured approach to building competencies in systems thinking, cross-sectoral communication, and collaborative leadership. Early education initiatives, including game-based learning pilots in Italy and France, aim to introduce One Health principles to younger generations. Despite progress, gaps remain in One Health tools, particularly regarding gender equity, social inclusion, and environmental integration. Strengthening environmental assessment tools, integrating biodiversity considerations, and promoting continuous learning are essential to fully operationalize the approach. Ultimately, transforming One Health from a conceptual framework into an operational paradigm requires sustained investment in education, training, and collaboration across sectors. By strengthening awareness of interconnected systems and collective responsibility, One Health offers a pathway toward inclusive and sustainable health for people, animals, and the planet.
After highlighting the latest developments in the One Health approach, the focus shifts to the need for a holistic perspective for its effective implementation enabling us to understand and tackle the causes of current and emerging transnational challenges affecting the health of humans, animals, plants and the environments. This is pursued by promoting integration with the multidisciplinary fields of Global Health and Planetary Health, pointing to their problems of definitions and approach. However, moving beyond a purely biomedical and ecological framing of One Health requires engaging with the political and economic determinants that shape health outcomes. The "Structural One Health" approach, for example, investigates the "causes of the causes" of pandemics, highlighting how trade policies, global financial flows and corporate power drive ecological degradation, intensification of animal production, and ultimately influence human wellbeing. Integrating One Health with Global Health and Planetary Health thus implies not only interdisciplinary collaboration, but also critical reflection on the economic paradigms and power structures that underpin contemporary global health crises.
This article critically examines participation within the One Health approach, arguing that it functions not merely as a management device but as a political process through which knowledge, authority, and responsibility are negotiated. We frame OH as a heterogeneous social field shaped by unequal relations of recognition among multiple, overlapping epistemic communities and situated local knowledges. Drawing on methodological reflection on participatory practices, we use critical cartography as an empirical and analytical lens, arguing that mapping is not merely a representational tool but a relational practice that structures whose knowledge counts, thereby enabling or constraining the co-production and redistribution of epistemic authority in health governance.
Il Ministero della salute, con il Dipartimento per la salute umana, la salute animale e dell'ecosistema (One Health) e dei rapporti internazionali (Dip. OH), ha recentemente avviato una serie di partnership scientifiche e interistituzionali al fine di costruire un Modello operativo One Health, con approccio sistemico, con architettura innovativa che va oltre i confini tradizionali della disciplina, aprendosi a diverse dimensioni interdipendenti. L'articolo propone un nuovo paradigma operativo per la tutela della salute pubblica, declinando il concetto di One Health attraverso tre dimensioni: la dimensione culturale, la dimensione dell'equità e la dimensione della prevenzione proattiva. L'obiettivo è superare la visione tradizionale settoriale per abbracciare un modello integrato che pone la tutela della salute pubblica al centro delle scelte strategiche del Dipartimento. L'articolo espone i programmi e le azioni concrete avviate dal Dip. OH, declinando le collaborazioni intersettoriali – nazionali e internazionali – alla base di una governance One Health, evidence-based, che ha il fine di proteggere simultaneamente salute umana, animale, ambientale ed ecosistemica, in un'ottica di sostenibilità e resilienza.
The contribution seeks to identify key interpretative coordinates for analyzing, from a legal and socio-legal perspective, the incorporation of the One Health (OH) paradigm into the Italian legal system, taking as its reference the definition developed by the Quadripartite Alliance. The analysis highlights how OH operates at the intersection of health and environmental domains, functioning as a conceptual and operational framework that integrates scientific knowledge, institutional strategies, and legal instruments. In this context, the relationship between health protection and environmental protection emerges as a structural element of national legislation. The study proposes a tripartite distinction between the "right to," the "law of," and the "law for" One Health, enabling the articulation of its reception across three levels: the reinterpretation of subjective legal positions, the establishment of dedicated institutional arrangements, and the evolution of public policies and sectoral regulations aligned with OH principles. Despite these advancements, significant challenges persist. One Health is characterized as a form of technonomic regulation, grounded in the interaction between science and political decision-making, whose definitional instability complicates its legal implementation. Moreover, its effectiveness depends on a broader cultural transformation aimed at overcoming disciplinary and administrative fragmentation. Ultimately, OH regulation performs both a social engineering and a systemic coordination function, whose success relies on institutional capacity and the strengthening of trust among social actors.
The One Health perspective promotes the interdependencies between the wellbeing of humans, animals, and ecosystems. This study explores One Health as a strategic lever for restoring the liveability of marginal and vulnerable territories, focusing on the Marche municipalities within the Monti Sibillini National Park. These areas, situated in the 20162017 seismic "crater", demonstrate how disasters exacerbate preexisting vulnerabilities and historical marginalisation. Using a longitudinal and transdisciplinary methodology, the research analyses territorial, sociodemographic, and economic data comparing 2015, 2020, and 2025. Through a SWOT analysis, the paper identifies opportunities within favourable frameworks like the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) and the Marche Organic District. The study concludes that recovery must transcend material reconstruction to become a transformative "process of care" that integrates ecosystem health with socioeconomic sustainability.
Law No. 833/1978 created the Servizio Sanitario Nazionale (SSN) and placed general practitioners (GPs) at the center of local primary care as self-employed professionals operating under an agreement with the public health system. Decades of policy-led efforts have struggled to fully integrate GPs into the local healthcare services network established by the 1978 reform. This article offers reflections and proposals aimed at reimagining primary care and the role of general medicine in Italy through a One Health perspective, framed as a field of actors and practices triggered by the shifts of a risk society. Within this framework, two key strategic pillars emerge: the first concerns choices between "good" and "bad" prevention, while the second emphasizes the role of place-based policies in driving and enabling change.
The article analyzes One Health as a space of dialogue between heterogeneous disciplinary fields, assuming the concept of risk as a privileged ground for comparison between veterinary and social sciences. Risk is examined in its various forms: as a technical-operational category in veterinary sciences and as a socially produced construct in social sciences. Through this comparison, the article shows how interdisciplinary dialogue takes shape as a situated and asymmetrical process, in which definitions, priorities, and solutions emerge through practices of negotiation and translation. Risk thus becomes an interpretive key to understand how, within the One Health perspective, the cognitive frameworks guiding action and the forms of governance for human, animal, and environmental health are constructed, legitimized, and can be re-oriented.
Nel contesto italiano le soggettività LGBT+ continuano a incontrare ostacoli rilevanti nell'accesso e nella fruizione dei servizi sanitari. Tali barriere raramente si manifestano in forma esplicita, ma operano come micro-esclusioni quotidiane, invisibili ma sistemiche, che compromettono la qualità dell'esperienza di cura. L'articolo propone una lettura intersezionale e critica delle disuguaglianze sanitarie vissute da persone LGBT+, a partire da una ricerca qualitativa condotta con il metodo Photovoice. Attraverso la raccolta di fotografie e narrazioni individuali e collettive, il lavoro restituisce esperienze segnate da invisibilità istituzionale, fatiche relazionali e scarso riconoscimento di soggettività non conformi, in particolare queer e trans. Emergono al contempo strategie quotidiane di negoziazione ed adattamento che evidenziano forme sottili, ma significative, di azione simbolica e posizionamenti critici nei confronti del potere medico e istituzionale.
Drawing on Strauss's theory of negotiated order (1985), this article examines the everyday practices of physicians, nurses, and social workers within four Italian outpatient services serving elderly patients with cognitive decline or heart failure. Adopting a qualitative approach and based on 19 interviews, the study explores how professionals interpret and navigate organisational constraints that shape negotiations among actors and therapeutic interactions, with particular attention to the risks of ageism. Findings suggest that, alongside the risk of the routinisation of discriminatory practices, there is room for resistance through adaptive and situated professional microactions. Often subtle and invisible, these actions affirm the subjectivity of older patients and acknowledge the role of caregivers, without overtly challenging the institutional order.
The article analyses the views of elderly patients suffering from cognitive decline or heart failure, and their caregivers on their relationship with healthcare professionals within outpatient services, a care setting increasingly relevant for the management of chronicity in old age. Through the analysis of 36 interviews and adopting Strauss's theory of negotiated order, we investigate the relational dynamics that regulate the therapeutic interaction, with particular attention to the possible presence of ageist practices. The results show a significant participation of patients and caregivers in the coconstruction of the care pathway, but also highlight critical issues related to the asymmetry of power between the actors present in the cure setting.
Population aging and the digitalization of healthcare are reshaping European societies, posing both challenges and opportunities. Older adults, as primary users of healthcare services, often lack the digital skills needed to benefit fully from ehealth innovations, increasing the risk of social exclusion. Digital literacy is therefore essential to support autonomy, wellbeing, and equitable access to care. While various instructional methods exist, peertopeer learning remains underexplored despite its established use in other healthcare domains. This paper presents a scoping review aimed at mapping existing studies on peertopeer digital literacy courses for older adults. Specifically, it examines the structural characteristics of these courses and how their effectiveness and impact on wellbeing are assessed. The review addresses a gap in the literature and informs future development of inclusive digital education strategies for older populations.
