title: Identifying the impediments and enablers of ecohealth for a case study on health and environmental sanitation in Hà Nam, Vietnam.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  To date, research has shown an increasing use of the term "ecohealth" in literature, but few researchers have explicitly described how it has been used. We investigated a project on health and environmental sanitation (the conceptual framework of which included the pillars of ecohealth) to identify the impediments and enablers of ecohealth and investigate how it can move from concept to practice.
  
  
  METHODS
  A case study approach was used. The interview questions were centred on the nature of interactions and the sharing of information between stakeholders.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The analysis identified nine impediments and 15 enablers of ecohealth. Three themes relating to impediments, in particular-integration is not clear, don't understand, and limited participation-related more directly to the challenges in applying the ecohealth pillars of transdisciplinarity and participation. The themes relating to enablers-awareness and understanding, capacity development, and interactions-facilitated usage of the research results. By extracting information on the environmental, social, economic, and health aspects of environmental sanitation, we found that the issue spanned multiple scales and sectors.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The challenge of how to integrate these aspects should be considered at the design stage and throughout the research process. We recommend that ecohealth research teams include a self-investigation of their processes in order to facilitate a comparison of moving from concept to practice, which may offer insights into how to evaluate the process.
authors.affiliation: Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, 2509 Stewart Building (#45), Guelph, N1G 2W1 ON Canada ; Public Health Risk Sciences Division, Laboratory for Foodborne Zoonoses, Public Health Agency of Canada, 160 Research Lane, Unit 206, Guelph, ON N1G 5B2 Canada ; Center for Public Health and Ecosystem Research, Hanoi School of Public Health (HSPH), 138 Giang Vo Street, Hanoi, Vietnam.
authors.forename: Vi
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.affiliation: Center for Public Health and Ecosystem Research, Hanoi School of Public Health (HSPH), 138 Giang Vo Street, Hanoi, Vietnam ; Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Socinstrasse 57, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland and Hanoi, Vietnam ; Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (ESWAG), Sandec - Department of Water and Sanitation in Developing Countries, P.O. Box, CH-8600, Dübendorf, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Hung
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nguyen-Viet
authors.affiliation: Center for Public Health and Ecosystem Research, Hanoi School of Public Health (HSPH), 138 Giang Vo Street, Hanoi, Vietnam.
authors.forename: Phuc
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pham-Duc
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecosystem and Public Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Calgary, TRW 2D26 3280 Hospital Drive, NW, Calgary, Alberta T2N 4Z6 Canada ; Centre for Coastal Health, 900 Fifth Street, Nanaimo, British Columbia V9R 5S5 Canada.
authors.forename: Craig
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Stephen
authors.affiliation: Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, 2509 Stewart Building (#45), Guelph, N1G 2W1 ON Canada.
authors.forename: Scott A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: McEwen
keywords: Case study; Ecohealth; Evaluation; Health; Sanitation; Vietnam