One Health and Public Health Implications of Sterilization-Based Management in Free-Roaming Dogs and Cats

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue invites research and reviews on the sterilization-centered management of free-roaming dogs and cats (e.g., TNR/CNR) within a One Health and public-health framework. We welcome contributions that quantify population-level outcomes, animal welfare and sentinel health indicators, and public-health interfaces (zoonoses, AMR, environmental health).

Potential topics include the following:

• Program coverage, continuity, and spatial design; evaluation frameworks linking effort to measurable outcomes (incidence, densities, welfare metrics);
• Epidemiology at the human–animal–environment interface: zoonotic risks, AMR sentinels, and community health indicators;
• Welfare assessment pre/post-intervention, perioperative safety, field anesthesia/analgesia, and pain/stress biomarkers;
• Implementation science and governance: regulatory coherence, municipal practice, stakeholder engagement, and cost-effectiveness;
• Methods and measurement: modelling, GIS, monitoring dashboards, molecular diagnostics, and data standards.

We especially encourage interdisciplinary research and policy-relevant studies from urban, peri-urban, rural, and insular settings. Purely lethal control studies without a One Health/public-health analytical component fall outside the scope of this Special Issue.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. María del Mar Travieso-Aja
Prof. Dr. Octavio Pérez Luzardo
Guest Editors

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