Transcript – Improved Metrics to Assess the Burden of Livestock and Crop Disease and Production Loss

The one health community recognizes that plant and animal diseases affect crop yield and livestock productivity, which in turn affects human health. However, thus far there have been no tools to measure this impact. Quality adjusted life years and disability adjusted life years are widely used by international agencies to compare the impact of human diseases around the world to estimate the cost utility of alternative control strategies. The short term goal of this study is to develop and validate two metrics-the quality adjusted life year associated with agriculture and the disability adjusted life year associated with agriculture. These metrics will allow us to measure the impact of agricultural productivity losses on human, physical, mental and social wellbeing. Field work, including focus groups and surveys, is being conducted in northwestern Nicaragua with collaborators from the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua focus groups. The farmers have begun and ultimately will help determine the most significant animal and crop diseases in the region. Surveys will collect information on economic and quality of life losses incurred due to the identified conditions. These data will then be incorporated into the newly developed metrics. In the long term, we hope to further validate the approach through the inclusion of other crop and animal diseases, including zoonotic diseases in additional communities located in both developed and developing countries. Overall, we hope to change the way that institutions and agencies evaluate the impact of agricultural production losses on public health worldwide.