ZOE Stakeholder Workshop in Slovakia
Since October 2025, stakeholder workshops have been held in the five case studies (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Slovakia and Slovenia) as part of the ZOE project. The aim of the workshop is to work with institutional actors to identify and discuss the behavioural, social and cultural factors that can increase or decrease the risk of zoonoses in the case study.
On 13 November 2025, the first stakeholder workshop in Slovakia took place in Marianka, a small town near Bratislava. It was organised by ZOE researchers from the Biomedical Research Centre in Bratislava and the Slovak Academy of Sciences. Three of our ZOE staff members, Julia Wesely, Charlotte Tienes and Johannes Richter, were involved in both the preparations and the implementation on site.
The area around Marianka was selected as a project case study due to the land cover and land use changes that have taken place there in recent years. From an urban research perspective, Marianka’s growth towards the forest areas to the east is also very interesting.
Participants in the workshop included local experts with expertise in ecology and forestry, as well as government officials, including the mayor of Marianka.
The workshop included group work and plenary discussions. After initially discussing zoonotic diseases relevant to the region, the focus shifted to behaviours, beliefs and knowledge, as well as structural factors and preventive measures that can contribute to the emergence and transmission of zoonoses. These were identified by the participants, presented graphically and discussed.
The results of the workshop are crucial for comprehensively describing the risk factors for zoonoses from the experts’ perspective. In addition, the results contribute to developing our methods for the next steps in the case studies. Following another stakeholder workshop in Slovenia, the next step is to survey risk factors from the perspective of the local population in all five case studies. Questionnaires and observations will be used to collect data on vulnerabilities, behaviour patterns and coping strategies of local people in relation to zoonoses. All these steps form the basis for the community workshops planned at the end of the project in all five case studies. The aim is to work with local people to develop targeted prevention strategies.
More ZOE news:
