Table 3 Developing a One Health glossary

The TAG confirmed that agreed-upon definitions of terms would be crucial to understanding the competency framework, especially because some terms had sector-specific meanings. As a result, we compiled a One Health glossary while respecting the sector-specific definitions of certain terms.

Each domain lead reviewed the complete set of competency statements for their domain and identified the terms to include in the glossary. Duplicate terms were not excluded at the start, as there could be different definitions of the same term depending on the sector or domain. In the next step, several existing glossaries were consulted, and all suitable definitions were listed. If a description did not exist or was not appropriate, the domain lead proposed a suitable definition for the term within the context in which it was being used.

Each term was defined, respecting sector-specific definitions and references. In general, we applied existing technical terminology from the FAO, WHO and WOAH, e.g., in the areas of the (veterinary) health workforce, epidemiology, and surveillance, and from the glossary of the Tripartite Zoonosis guide, where applicable (https://www.who.int/initiatives/tripartite-zoonosis-guide). In addition, we used the UN Terminology database https://unterm.un.org/unterm2/en/.

Two team experts from the agencies not in the lead of the specific domain reviewed the terms and definitions proposed, e.g., if WOAH was leading the development of the Domain 7 glossary terms and definitions, a team member from FAO and WHO each would review the proposed terms and suggest edits. This review round allowed us to narrow down the proposed definitions for duplicate glossary terms and discard unsuitable or duplicate definitions.

The competency framework yielded 129 glossary entries, including a listing of references consulted for each term.