EcoHealth : a primer

Abstract

The primer is an introduction to key ideas and practices in an “ecosystem approach to health” or ecohealth. The major tools for doing ecohealth are questions rather than techniques per se (see chapter 5). The techniques for how those questions are asked will vary from situation to situation, from geospatial mapping to interviews, from workshops to mathematical modeling. The combination of stakeholder participation – which necessarily leads to multiple perspectives on reality, and systems thinking – which necessarily leads to questions of relationships, boundaries and responsibilities, takes us to the core of the ecohealth approach, which is complexity.