Improving One Health collaboration through National Bridging Workshops

The National Bridging Workshop (NBW) Program is a Tripartite (WHO, FAO, WOAH) program focusing on NBWs and the subsequent implementation of NBW Roadmaps in countries to strengthen multisectoral collaboration. NBWs are three-day events bringing together 50-120 national participants from public health, animal health and environment sectors. The objective is to discuss and evaluate their current collaboration at the animal-human-environment interface, identify how to improve it, and develop a joint consensual roadmap across the three sectors.

Key outputs are:

1. A diagnosis of current strengths and weaknesses in the coordination between animal health, human health and environment sectors for 16 technical areas that are key for the prevention, detection and response to health events at the human-animal-environment interface
   
   
2. NBW Roadmap: a harmonized, actionable and realistic joint roadmap of activities that the three sectors develop together and will implement to improve the multisectoral collaboration.

Following up on the NBW Roadmap is a cornerstone of the Tripartite’s strategy to build collaborative capacities in countries and to support them in complying with international standards. The follow-up relies on 4 pillars: (i) recruitment/nomination of a national NBW Catalyst; (ii) monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the roadmap activities; (iii) technical and when possible financial support from the Tripartite for the implementation of NBW Roadmap activities; and (iv) establishment of a Community of Practice.

As of January 2025, NBWs have been conducted in 58 countries. The NBW Reports and NBW Roadmaps are publicly available.