Collaboration under pressure: sustaining One Health research teams in a post-COVID environment

TL;DR

This paper discusses how to sustain collaborative One Health research teams in a post-COVID world, emphasizing the need for institutional support and inclusive practices.

Contribution

The paper introduces a framework for sustaining multidisciplinary research teams under systemic pressures in a post-pandemic environment.

Findings

Neoliberal reforms and managerial practices threaten the resilience of One Health research teams.

The pandemic highlighted the fragility of collaborative models due to financial and operational pressures.

Institutional reforms and alignment with global goals are essential for sustaining impactful research.

Abstract

The sustainability of contemporary One Health research increasingly relies on the capacity of universities, research institutes and partner organisations to support collaborative teams. Such teams are indispensable because they integrate diverse expertise, address complex problems and respond rapidly to health crises such as COVID-19. One Health provides a compelling exemplar of collaborative research, uniting human, animal and environmental health to tackle global challenges and emerging infectious diseases. Yet the resilience of such teams is being tested by neoliberal reforms that have reshaped higher education into a competitive marketplace and by managerial practices that prioritise measurable outputs over collegiality, autonomy and disciplinary breadth. The pandemic exposed the fragility of this model: laboratories closed, workloads intensified and financial pressures triggered redundancies, even as collaboration proved essential to global health responses. This Opinion article examines how systemic pressures and interpersonal dynamics intersect to influence the functioning of research teams in a post-COVID environment. It highlights funding precarity, employment insecurity, inequities and political instability as persistent challenges, and explores how performance pressures and competition can affect collaboration. Sustaining research teams requires institutional reforms, inclusive leadership, recognition of diverse contributions and alignment with global frameworks such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), so that One Health research and other multidisciplinary endeavours addressing emerging and neglected diseases remain resilient, impactful and socially relevant.