Needs assessment for national wildlife health programs

Wildlife health programs are essential for monitoring and managing wildlife populations, which in turn supports biodiversity, ecosystem stability, the economy, and public health. By conducting a comprehensive and systematic needs assessment, countries can ensure that their wildlife health initiatives and programs are fit for purpose and sustainable. This needs assessment tool aims to identify programmatic gaps and set priorities in developing or scaling up local and national wildlife health programs. The needs assessment was organized in four phases: planning, data gathering (through semi-structured interviews), data analysis and recommendations. The tool itself covers fundamental programmatic components, such as detection and identification of diseases, pathogens and toxic agents, information management, and analysis and communication. We assessed the performance of the first version of this tool, which was piloted in the Kingdom of Thailand and Republic of Rwanda, considering usability, adaptability, actionable insights, stakeholder feedback and continuous improvement. Based on the evidence gathered, we suggest an expansion of this tool to include the urgency and impact of addressing gaps and needs as well as implementation capacity (from none to very high) to support the prioritization of criteria within each component of a wildlife health program. This needs assessment can help identify priority areas for wildlife health program improvement, thereby optimizing the impact of investments.