The Epistemic Politics of Snakebite Envenomation: a social science study of the digitally-mediated governance of a One Health challenge

This project investigates how the 'One Health' public health governance paradigm - which imagines that animals, humans, and the environment form an interdependent system whose health should be governed in an interdisciplinary manner - realises its aims in practice. It does so through the case study of snakebite envenomation (SBE); a disease causing ~100,000 deaths annually, mostly in poor populations in the Global South. Snakebite has become increasing framed in One Health terms due to its multispecies health impacts and diverse drivers including social factors (such as labour conditions) and environmental factors (such as climate change). This One Health framing has led the WHO to pursue SBE governance interventions that integrate expert knowledge from diverse fields (such as ecology, medicine, and pharmacy) alongside knowledge from laypeople who experience the disease's effects. The WHO's recently released Snakebite Information Data Platform (SIDP) attempts to realise this vision by synthesising snakebite data from experts and communities living at risk of SBE to recommend treatment protocols. However, it is unclear whether this One Health approach has led to just representation of diverse perspectives and equitable health outcomes for humans, snakes, and the environment. Thus, this project will investigate: 1) how different groups 'know' snakebite; 2) how these knowledge practices inform the disease's management; and 3) the implications of these governance programmes for multispecies health. To do this, I will employ a mixed-methods approach comprising: document analysis (interrogating academic and grey literature concerning snakebite's global governance); expert interviews (enquiring into the more institutionalised means through which public health actors govern SBE); and participant observation (analysing the situated knowledges and practices through which lay and expert communities know, live with, and manage SBE). This will involve fieldwork at the Instituto Clodomiro Picado in Costa Rica (a leading snakebite research hub) and the WHO's SIDP team to probe how diverse epistemic communities - including ecologists, health policymakers, snakebite clinicians, and laypeople with experience negotiating the risks of snakebite - have different understandings of what snakebite is, what it is caused by, what its effects are, and how these knowledges inform SBE management strategies with varying consequences for snakes and the communities who live with them. As the first substantial study of snakebite's epistemic politics, this project represents a major test case for whether digitised global health interventions facilitate or constrain epistemic pluralism, generate relationships that produce usable epidemiological data and responsive networks, and secure more equitable multispecies health outcomes.