Crowd Health Alignment and Greater Engagement (CHAnGE)

CHAnGE is intended as a governance tool based on a One Health (OH) approach, i.e. integrating decisions on human, animal and ecosystem health across sectors and disciplines, using systems theory and participatory processes. We propose CHAnGE as a smart phone enabled tool to elicit value systems associated to the different aspects of OH relying on personal construct psychology (i.e. repertory grids). The app will visualise the values at various scales and link them to data on health outcomes provided by personal wearables, health professionals, as well as public and corporate data streams to facilitate (1) linking personal values to public health initiatives and their outcomes, and thus provide motivation for action, (2) identifying leverage for health promoting action, (3) tracking outcomes of individual and collective action over time to document their impact, (4) embedding health-related decisions in the local socio-cultural context and enhancing stewardship, and (5) amplifying the consideration of animal and ecosystem health. The concept considers three main facets of the governance cycle: (A) From a decision-making perspective, it provides supporting information on how well values are reflected in individual or collective behaviour, thus aiding agenda setting and policy design at different levels. (B) From an implementation perspective, it allows to align individual and collective behaviour (policy) with values, and inversely may reveal how values influence the interconnected system of human, animal and ecosystem health. (C) From an evaluation perspective, it provides value-focused information from behavioural data and online choices to better understand the motivations for real-world behaviour, and allows tracking of health outcomes over time.

A 4 day workshop was held in August 2018 to forge a consortium and prepare an application for an upcoming Horizon 2020 call and other funding opportunities to develop the project. The workshop was supported by the Digital Society Initiative of the University of Zurich and EU Research.

So far, no suitable call has been found, but the project team keeps meeting and pondering over ways to implement the idea.