My new #OneHealth book, #TheNatureOfPandemics, is officially published. This book feels more urgent now than when I started writing it, as we slip into the seductive comfort of ‘back to normal’, a kind of societal amnesia, despite clear evidence that pandemic risk continues to rise in a degrading, warming, hyper-connected world.

Pandemics are ecological stories. They're shaped by land-use change, biodiversity loss, globalised trade, cultural behaviours, and the invisible microbial worlds that bind us together.

To prevent future pandemics, we need to understand the systems that create them, not just respond to the symptoms.

I first started jotting down ideas for this book while being quarantined in my UK home village of Eyam (during peak COVID-19 days), a village famous for quarantining itself during the Black Death plague outbreak of 1665. This gave it a strange full-circle quality, as if the past and present were folding in on each other.

Over 3 years, I pulled together research across ecology, microbiology, epidemiology, psychology, social research, philosophy and systems science. I interviewed some of the world's top scientists to ask: What really is #OneHealth and why is the concept so important? Why should we take a more-than-human approach to health?

Sub-questions include:
- Why do pandemics emerge?
- How do our cognitive biases shape global health?
- Which pathogen/disease is most likely to cause the next pandemic?
- Should we be more interested in pandemics that occur in wildlife?
- How can we prevent future pandemics?
- What would a world look like if we designed for prevention, not damage control?

Writing this was one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done, but also one of the most necessary.

If you work in the environment sector, healthcare, governance/policy, biotech, psychology, planning, or just care about our shared future, this book is for you.

The Nature of Pandemics – available globally: https://pelagicpublishing.com/products/the-nature-of-pandemics
Currently available in Hardback, EBook, AudioBook

If you do grab a copy, I’d genuinely love to hear what resonates most with you.

Here’s to building a safer, healthier, more connected world for humans and (the rest of) nature.

www.jakemrobinson.com

#TheNatureOfPandemics #Microbiome #Biodiversity #PublicHealth #Environment #SystemsThinking #NewBook #ScienceCommunication #OneHealth