About
The TICKRISK study examines the comparative production, translation, and public interpretation of scientific knowledge concerning a hemorrhagic fever posing an imminent risk along Europe’s borderlands – Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever virus (CCHFv). The remit of this project is to strengthen preparedness and risk communication to improve public uptake of protective measures. Variously framed as a “a future problem” in France, “endemic” in expanses of Eastern and Southern Europe, “a ticking bomb” and “public health risk to the European Union”, CCHFv was listed as a global health threat in the WHO’s 2018 R&D Blueprint Priority list. Numerous CCHFv studies have been produced by virologists, entomologists, ecologists, and other biomedical researchers. To date, however, there is no multidisciplinary social sciences intervention on this threat to human health, and a single peer-reviewed social sciences article addressing CCHF.
TICKRISK study brings together leading medical anthropologists, historians, tick specialists, social epidemiologists, virologists, political scientists and a citizen science program in four sites on Europe’s borderlands (France, Spain, Romania and Turkey) experiencing different levels of outbreak risk. The AEE unit and its partners will undertake formative, participatory ethnographic and historical research at multiple levels in the project’s country sites. Our central objective is to learn through comparison between these four countries, situated in different temporalities and geographies of CCHFv, and to develop adapted health education and risk communication tools to prepare for and prevent outbreaks.
Overall, the project aims to strengthen preparedness and risk communication for CCHF outbreaks in these 4 sites by evaluating comparatively: the production of CCHFv scientific knowledge, its translation into public health policy and media communications, and grounded reception of these policies and communications, as well as experiences of human-tick-animal-environmental interactions (and where relevant, CCHF viral).
