Animal health decision-making increasingly intersects with broader societal challenges such as food security, livelihoods, animal welfare, climate change, and public health. Traditional economic approaches, while essential, often capture only part of these multidimensional impacts. There is a growing need for frameworks that can jointly assess economic, social, and environmental consequences—reflecting the true societal burden of animal diseases and their control.

The goal of this Research Topic is to advance understanding of how animal health decisions can incorporate multiple societal burdens—economic, social, environmental, and ethical—to deliver more sustainable and equitable outcomes. Too often, animal health policies and interventions are evaluated through a narrow lens of productivity or disease control, overlooking broader impacts such as livelihoods, animal welfare, public health, and climate resilience.

This Research Topic invites contributions that explore how animal health decisions can better integrate multiple societal burdens — including economic, environmental, public health, and welfare considerations. We seek studies that apply or develop interdisciplinary approaches linking economics, social sciences, and epidemiology to inform evidence-based decision-making.

Themes of interest include:

-Economic and social evaluation of animal health and welfare interventions

-Multi-criteria and One Health decision frameworks

-Modelling societal impacts of animal disease and policy options

-Behavioural and institutional drivers of veterinary decision-making

-Trade-offs and synergies among welfare, livelihoods, and sustainability outcomes

We welcome Original Research Articles, Brief Research Reports, Policy Analyses, and Perspectives (4,000–12,000 words). Submissions from participants of the 2025 ISESSAH Conference are especially encouraged, though contributions from the wider research community addressing these themes are also welcome.

Are you interested in contributing a manuscript to this Research Topic?

Proceedings of the ISESSAH Conference 2025: Towards Multiple Societal Burden Animal Health Decision-Making