Matthew Novak PhD, director of the Global Programs Unit, at the WaNBRC sees his work as part of a broader One Health approach to the critical issues our societies face, one that recognizes that the health of people, animals and the environment are all closely connected.
“Locally based maintenance of healthy populations of nonhuman primates in the wild is directly related the health of those local communities, and to our ability to continue doing the absolutely necessary research with them as animal models of human behavior and biology. From this, the work of understanding brain behavior relationships, and creating life-saving vaccines and medicines can continue. The results of this work, in turn, feeds back into local communities around the world, increasing human well-being and/or reducing human suffering. This is the critical loop of translational medicine,” he said.
Dr. Novak’s unit plans to continue studying human environment interactions ( e.g. microplastics, environmental contaminants, etc.) in regions where it has field sites, including Indonesia, Thailand, Laos and Nepal. However, the focus of the unit is on building social relationships in the communities where he works.
The Global Programs Unit doesn’t go into a community with a fixed research agenda. Instead, it works with local scientists and local residents to identify human-environment questions that matter to them.
“Rather than impose our ideas on our colleagues and hosts, our goal is to facilitate the science that our colleagues and hosts are interested in doing,” he said.
This approach is designed to create lasting change. The unit builds relationships, provides expertise to local research, shares findings with the communities where the work takes place, and trains the next generation of Conservationists. In Sulawesi, Indonesia, for example, outreach with elementary and middle school kids about endangered black macaques that live in the forest there has inspired local students, some of whom later returned at high school or college age to participate again, this time in one of the unit’s field courses, and at least one graduate of the field study program went on to run a conservation and ecotourism business.
Data show that “bottom-up approaches often have better long-term outcomes than top-down approaches,” to conservation Dr. Novak said. “Individuals continue the work because they see it as valuable to their own specific future, and the community in which their family lives, not simply because an outside group asked or instructed them to do so.”
“You can’t really expect long-term systematic success in improving human health without attempting to understand the people, and the biodiversity of the environments in which they live at the same time,” he said.
Ultimately, our work on environmental contaminants can help establish a baseline for understanding where these substances are found, how they change over time, and how they affect wildlife, ecosystems and, ultimately, human health.
Dr. Novak describes the potential of nonhuman primates in the wild as both “flagships” and “indicators.” As a flagship species nonhuman primates can draw the public’s attention to conservation efforts. As an indicator species, they can provide an early warning when something is wrong in an ecosystem, like the proverbial canary in a coal mine once warned minors about dangerous air.
Researchers can examine how agriculture, deforestation, pollution and expanding cities affect primates and their habitats. Finding contaminants in primates can reveal changes in the environment that deserve closer attention.
“Nonhuman primates are essentially this flagship indicator species that allow us to monitor how things like agriculture, continued development and human encroachment of cities are changing the health of the environment,” Dr. Novak said. That information “can predict how human health is going to change in those areas as well.”
The work also supports the future of biomedical research. Healthy wild populations are important for conservation, and they help protect the long-term scientific value of nonhuman primates as research partners.
For the Global Programs Unit, the connection among field research, laboratory science and human health forms a loop. Information from the wild can guide research at the scientist’s laboratory bench. That research can then support even better health. Scientists must then communicate what they learn in ways people can understand and use.
The goal is long-term: stronger local partnerships, more local scientists working in the regions where nonhuman primates live, healthier ecosystems and better protection for nonhuman primates. Dr. Novak hopes that decades from now, more peoples of the world will have embraced this locally-focused, bottom up, One Health approach to solving health issues of our planet, and that the WaNBRC Global Programs Unit fought for the people, for the animals, and for the environment. “If the work we do can help to move the needle in the right direction, even a little bit, I think to positive effect on human health outcomes will be quite profound.”
Learn more about Global Programs via this link.