Melanie Rock

• MSW, PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Calgary

This article contributes to the literature on One Health and public health ethics by expanding the principle of solidarity. We conceptualize solidarity to encompass not only practices intended to assist other people, but also practices intended to assist non-human others, including animals, plants, or places. To illustrate how manifestations of hum...

Drawing on the One Health concept, and integrating a dual focus on public policy and practices of caring from the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, we outline a conceptual framework to help guide the development and assessment of local governments' policies on pets. This framework emphasizes well-being in human populations, while recognizing tha...

The ‘posthumanist turn’ in critical theory comprises efforts to recognize and analyze the interdependence of human existence with non-human entities, including other animals, spaces, and technologies. Scholarship aligned to and debating posthumanism pertains to public health, but has yet to be clearly articulated for a public health audience. This...

Health promotion views collaborations between local governments and citizens as key to improving health and lessening inequities in urban areas. Public parks, which are typically managed by local governments, are key settings for promoting physical activity, positive social interactions and overall well-being. Yet research on civic participation in...

Given that recent literature reviews on physical activity in urban parks deliberately excluded qualitative findings, we reviewed qualitative research on this topic informed by a published classification scheme based on quantitative research. Twenty-one studies met our inclusion criteria. These studies relied mainly on semi-structured interviews wit...

Contamination of public parks by dogs is a potential source of conflict among park users, causing “tragedy of the commons” problems. Besides the social conflict, feces can pose serious health risks to both dogs and humans. In this study we analyzed the extent and patterns of the distribution of dog feces in the urban parks of the City of Calgary. W...

Contamination of public parks by dogs is a potential source of conflict among park users, causing “tragedy of commons” problems. Besides the social conflict, feces can pose serious health risks to both dogs and humans. In this study we analyzed the extent and patterns of the distribution of dog feces in the urban parks of the City of Calgary. We co...

Simple Summary In this article, we report on action research in the Canadian province of Alberta, based on forging alliances with officers who enforce federal, provincial, and municipal legislation involving animals. Some of these officers worked in rural areas, and others worked in urban areas. Some mainly enforced Alberta’s Animal Protection Act,...

At the convergence of population aging and pet-ownership, community stakeholders are well-positioned to support older adults’ relationships with companion animals through age-related transitions in health and living arrangements. In this study’s setting, a volunteer-based pet care assistance program launched in 2017 to provide practical assistance...

The field of urban studies has scrutinised digital technologies and their proliferation, but rather little attention has been paid to databases. Furthermore, contributions to date have focused almost exclusively on how digital technologies interface with human populations in cities. By contrast, we draw attention to databases maintained by city gov...

Objectives: We examine the public policies that have been formulated to reduce the incidence of dog bites. We do so to encourage the adoption of policies aligned with One Health promotion. Methods: This case-study research involved an ethnographic approach. Our qualitative analysis derived from participant observation, policy documents, media co...

Access to veterinary services can have positive impacts on animal health and welfare, and on human mental and physical health and well-being; however, many communities worldwide lack access to such services. At their request, the 5 communities of the Sahtu Settlement Area, Northwest Territories, Canada, have received annual access to preventive vet...

This qualitative media analysis explores how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) portrayed ‘dog problems’ and their solutions in Indigenous communities in Canada from 2008 through 2018. We apply a One Health framework to demonstrate how human, animal, and the socio-environmental health are interconnected, which aligns more explicitly with I...

During disasters, the behaviour of pet owners and of pets themselves may compromise the ability of emergency responders to perform their duties safely. Furthermore, pet loss can have deleterious effects on personal and community recovery. To explore these issues and their implications for health promotion and disaster management practice, we conduc...

To promote accessible veterinary care in the community and to help students refine their communication skills, the University of Calgary, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (UCVM) partnered with the Calgary Urban Project Society (CUPS), a human services organization, to develop the UCVM-CUPS Pet Health Clinics. These clinics are a service-learning expe...

This article contributes to the critical disability and human-nonhuman animal studies literatures through a discourse analysis of newspaper stories about animal-assisted therapy (AAT) and children with disabilities published in the United States and Canada. The articles in our corpus form a recognizable genre that we call AAT human-nonhuman animal...

Community perspectives are rarely sought or integrated into dog management policy and practice. Dog management in remote communities in Australia has focused on reducing the number of dogs, which is often implemented by visiting veterinarians, despite widely-held opinions that fly-in-fly-out services provide only temporary solutions. We conducted p...

Climate change is contributing to local disasters, and pets increasingly figure in mediated views and responses. By theorizing such responses, we expand on the conceptualization of “healthy publics”. In our view, healthy publics can arise from multi-species entanglements, out of which enactments of solidarity may emerge. Such enactments may encompa...

Access to veterinary services in marginalized communities has important implications for people and animals around the world. Subsidized veterinary services are occasionally provided, however, they are seldom evaluated for their value to stakeholders and overall animal health. In 2017, we evaluated a decade-long veterinary program in four remote co...

Background Dog-bite injuries remain a perennial problem, especially in pediatric emergency services. Nonetheless, few researchers have examined how local-level policies may contribute to primary prevention. We do so with qualitative research and an emphasis on implementation. This study highlights the potential benefit of coordination in Alberta be...

This article features a partnership between a veterinary school and a charity that aims to enhance the wellbeing of low‐income people. Through this partnership, the charity periodically hosts veterinary clinics for clients and their pets. Even as the veterinarians and veterinary students duly examine people's pets, these pop‐up clinics aim to help...

The One Health concept has inspired a rich vein of applied research and scholarly reflection over the past decade, yet with little influence from qualitative methodologists. With this overview, we describe the underpinning assumptions, purposes, and potential pitfalls of data collection techniques and methods of data analysis in key qualitative res...

Simple Summary Any dog is capable of biting, and dog bites can cause serious injuries to humans or other animals. To prevent dogs from biting, we need to understand the circumstances in which dog bites are most likely to occur. Once we have that information, we can act by improving public awareness and tailoring interventions to those most at risk...

This study examines alleged discrimination towards people partnered with assistance dogs, as represented by Canadian newspapers. Doing so expands understanding of attitudes held toward assistance dogs and highlights everyday challenges faced by the people with whom they are partnered. Articles included for analysis were tabulated according to where...

Despite calls for the adoption of 'One-Health' approaches, dog-bite injuries remain neglected in healthcare and public health, and our study may help to understand why. Media coverage can influence policy directions, including policies that address dogs. We collected articles (n = 65) published in two local newspapers, 2012-2017, then carried out a...

The advent of ‘smart’ technologies has already transformed urban life, with important consequences for physical, mental, and social well-being. Population health and equity have, however, been conspicuously absent from much of the ‘smart cities’ research and policy agenda. With this in mind, we argue for a re-conceptualization of ‘digital divides’...

This paper draws on the work of Bourdieu to understand how experiences with dog ownership become embodied and how these experiences influence young people's development as they leave home and learn to mobilize any capital to which they have access. Our results show that dogs can provide everyday routine during a stage in life when young people ofte...

While qualitative inquiry has been a part of the Canadian Journal of Public Health (CJPH) for many years, CJPH does not yet have the reputation as a home for qualitative research that has a critical focus and that is cqqqonversant with contemporary developments in social theory and qualitative methodology. This paper describes efforts to establish...

Housing is an “age-friendly” priority, yet affordable pet-friendly housing for older adults is scarce. To explore this incongruence, we conducted an ethnographic case study. Qualitative interviews (n=14) with senior administration, frontline employees, and volunteers from social service and animal welfare organizations highlighted perceptions that...

Introduction Worldwide, dog-bites remain a leading cause of pediatric injuries. Local governments are key because they can enact and enforce policies on dogs. The City of Calgary has earned an international reputation for its approach to regulating dogs and dog-owners, which has resulted in marked reductions in per capita dog-aggression complaints....

Over one-third of older adults in many countries have a companion animal, and pets may harbor health-promoting potential. Few studies have considered pet-ownership in relation to economic vulnerability, and pet-ownership has not been often considered within policy efforts to promote ageing-in-place. We conducted a mixed methods case study to unders...

When disasters strike, companion animals (pets) matter. Emergency planning for them is a key aspect of disaster preparedness, especially considering that people may delay evacuation out of concern for their pets. Temporary boarding options for pets are important; however, caregivers (owners) must ultimately return to permanent housing. Surprisingly...

This article is about a mode of scholarly practice we call critical social science with public health. The article responds to our dissatisfaction with established approaches to social science engagement with public health that have developed out of Straus’ early distinction between sociology in and of medicine. By critical social science with publ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) both recognize the importance of veterinary services in controlling zoonotic diseases, in preventing human injury, and in protecting the welfare of non-human animals. Furthermore, both organizations recommend regular evaluations of veterinary programs. Accordingl...

RÉSUMÉ Des données de référence nationales et représentatives de l’Étude longitudinale canadienne sur le vieillissement (ÉLCV) ont été utilisées pour évaluer si la possession d’un animal de compagnie était associée à la participation sociale et à la satisfaction de vivre des personnes âgées (≥65 ans, n= 7,474). Des statistiques descriptives ont per...

Simple Summary In rental housing policy, pets are rarely considered as valued household members. Instead, landlords and property managers are often permitted to ban pets outright, or to advertise them as merely negotiable in their listings for rental housing. In fact, previous research has shown that moving and renting are key reasons for animal re...

Feline obesity has become a common disease and important animal welfare issue. Little is known about how, or how often, veterinarians and feline-owning clients are addressing obesity during clinical appointments. The purpose of this qualitative study was to characterize verbal and non-verbal communication between veterinarians and clients regarding...

Dog-bites and rabies are neglected problems worldwide, notwithstanding recent efforts to raise awareness and to consolidate preventive action. As problems, dog-bites and rabies are entangled with one another, and both align with the concept of One Health. This concept emphasizes interdependence between humans and non-human species in complex socio-...

During a disaster, people may make evacuation decisions based on their companion animal’s welfare, therefore exposing themselves, their companion animals, and emergency responders to increased risk for injury or death. The loss and suffering of companion animals in disasters causes deep distress, diminishing people’s capacity to rebuild their lives...

This paper extends the terms of engagement between social science, posthumanist debates and One Health by questioning whether ‘the public’ may include non-human animals. The One Health concept refers to interdependence between human beings and non-human species in socio-ecological systems. One Health interventions and critiques have tended to empha...

p> OBJECTIVES: Our study objectives were to: 1) estimate differences in perceptions of the neighbourhood built environment among non-dog-owners, owners who walk their dogs (dog-walkers) and owners who do not walk their dogs (non-dog-walkers), and 2) estimate associations between perceptions of the neighbourhood built environment and dog-walking fre...

In this natural experiment, we investigated on-leash and off-leash policies as plausible influences on the behavior of dog-walkers in the City of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Following policy-mandated public consultations, two of the four parks initially proposed by the City as sites for new off-leash areas retained on-leash designations. Within a yea...

One Health (OH) is a novel paradigm that recognizes that human and non-human animal health is interlinked through our shared environment. Increasingly prominent in public health responses to zoonoses, OH differs from traditional approaches to animal-borne infectious risks, because it also aims to promote the health of animals and ecological systems...

Injuries due to interactions with dogs (e.g. bites, collisions, etc) are an important public health concern from both a health and an economic perspective. The consequences of these injuries can be both physical (injury, pain, infection, disfiguration) and psychological. The purpose of this study is to understand the prevalence and characteristics...

Regular physical activity is associated with numerous health benefits, including the prevention of many chronic diseases and conditions or a reduction in their adverse effects. Intervention studies suggest that promoting dog walking among dog owners who do not routinely walk their dogs may be an effective strategy for increasing and maintaining reg...

The One Health agenda comprises efforts across multiple sectors and disciplines to coordinate the interdependence of human existence with nonhuman animals and within ecosystems. Thus far, however, One Health has mainly been construed as an ecological approach to the prevention and control of infectious diseases, especially those which are zoonotic,...

Urban parks are important settings for physical activity, but few natural experiments have investigated the influences of park modifications on activity patterns and visitor profiles.We assessed the impact of implementing a municipal policy on off-leash dogs in city parks in Calgary (Alberta, Canada). Systematic observation undertaken in 2011 and 2...

Responsibility is often regarded as a unified concept. However in everyday language, the term refers to a cat's cradle of related ideas and perceptions. Although there might be consensus that individuals should be ultimately responsible for their own animals during crises, individuals and groups may disagree about the norms and obligations we ought...

Dog-walking promotes physical activity and positive social interactions, and thus dog-walking has implications for people's physical and mental health. As a result, experts in public health have endorsed designing and managing public space to support dog-walking. Nevertheless, the presence of dogs in public space is subject to negotiation and can b...

The One Health concept of combined veterinary and human health continues to gain momentum, but the supporting literature is sparse. In this book, the origins of the concept are examined, and practical content on methodological tools, data gathering, monitoring techniques, study designs, and mathematical models is included. Zoonotic diseases, with d...

Giardia spp. is a common gastrointestinal (GI) parasite of multiple host species, including dogs and humans, with the potential for zoonotic transmission. The risk of GI parasitism in dogs (including Giardia spp.) may increase with park use in urban areas. This study aimed to (1) determine whether park attendance is a risk factor for Giardia spp. i...

Responsible dog ownership has been identified as a point of intervention to promote physical activity, based upon an expectation of dog walking in public space. Nevertheless, quantitative research has found variability among owners in their dog walking. In this study, we explore the implications for health promotion of such variability. We do so by...

"t" "Associations between park use and infections with gastrointestinal (GI) parasites in dogs (Canis familiaris) have been previously observed, suggesting park use may pose risks for infection in dogs, and potentially, in humans. This study was conducted to establish the overall level of perceived risk of parasitism in dogs, the frequency of unlea...

Giardia spp. is a common gastrointestinal (GI) parasite of multiple host species, including dogs and humans, with the potential for zoonotic transmission. The risk of GI parasitism in dogs (including Giardia spp.) may increase with park use in urban areas. This study aimed to (1) determine whether park attendance is a risk factor for Giardia spp. i...

This study investigates whether dog-ownership and neighborhood characteristics are associated with sense of community (SC) and neighborhood-based recreational walking (NRW) for older adults. A random sample of adults ≥50 years of age (n=884) provided information on SC, dog-related factors, neighborhood walking, and socio-demographics in telephone a...

Background: Many characteristics of urban parks and neighbourhoods have been linked to patterns of physical activity, yet untangling these relationships to promote increased levels of physical activity presents methodological challenges. Based on qualitative and quantitative data, this article describes patterns of activity within urban parks and...

To what extent do non-human animals participate in that particular political configuration known as a public? While conventional wisdom about publics is predicated on a vision of political agency that privileges discursive and deliberative processes, recent scholarship situated in the material turn in the social sciences and humanities challenges t...

No abstract available.

Within the field of medical ethics, discussions related to public health have mainly concentrated on issues that are closely tied to research and practice involving technologies and professional services, including vaccination, screening, and insurance coverage. Broader determinants of population health have received less attention, although this s...

Dog walking enables physical activity and positive social interactions, but uncontrolled dogs as well as dog feces can foster conflict and deter physical activity, for both dog owners and nonowners. This case study shows that previously reported associations with dogs (both positive and negative) can be linked to the wording and the day-to-day impl...

Given unprecedented aging in the global population along with the physical and psychological challenges associated with aging, it is important to identify ways to protect and promote quality of life for seniors. Previous research has suggested that pet ownership may confer a variety of health and social benefits among seniors. The purpose of this a...

Fitness centers are a viable option for physical activity, particularly in climates with significant weather variation. Due to variation in economic and social expressions of exclusivity, fitness centers may have some relation to social inequalities in physical inactivity and related health outcomes; thus, our objective was to explore this relation...

The coincident and increasing occurrence of weight-related health problems in humans and canines in Western societies poses a challenge to our understanding of human–animal health relationships. More specifically, the epistemological and normative impetus provided by current approaches to shared health risks and chronic diseases in cohabiting human...

Although WorkSafeBC and private companies have worked for decades to improve logging industry safety and equipment, and practices have improved, the logging industry has consistently had a much higher than average rate of serious injuries and fatalities compared to other hazardous industries. Within the logging industry workers doing manual tree fe...

This article elaborates on what could be meant by a syndemic approach to prevention. The main argument is that a syndemic approach to prevention comprises a set of practices intended to promote population health. These practices include research, team-building, and developing partnerships with organizations with diverse mandates. Both infectious an...

Walking provides mental and physical health benefits for older adults. This study investigates whether dog-ownership and neighborhood characteristics are associated with sense of community and neighborhood-based recreational walking among older adults. A random sample of Calgary adults 50 years and older (n=884) participated in telephone and postal...

Research into physical activity and human health has recently begun to attend to dog-walking. This study extends the literature on dog-walking as a health behaviour by conceptualizing dog-walking as a caring practice. It centres on qualitative interviews with 11 Canadian dog-owners. All participants resided in urban neighbourhoods identified throug...

While the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) community has acknowledged the importance of public and consumer involvement in the HTA process, very few studies have examined how technology-related findings may be reported by the media to the broader public. This paper compares the content of press articles with the content of three Canadian HTA repo...

Fitness centers are a viable option for physical activity, particularly in climates with significant weather variation. Due to variation in economic and social expressions ofexclusivity, fitness centers may have some relation to social inequalities in physical inactivity and related health outcomes; thus, our objective was to explore this relation....

Weight-related health problems have become a common topic in Western mass media. News coverage has also extended to overweight pets, particularly since 2003 when the US National Academy of Sciences announced that obesity was also afflicting co-habiting companion animals in record numbers. To characterize and track views in popular circulation on ca...

Since the 1990s, glycated haemoglobin (HbA1C) has been the gold standard for monitoring glycaemic control in people diagnosed as having either type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) or type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Discussions are underway about diagnosing diabetes mellitus on the basis of HbA1C titres and using HbA1C tests to screen for T2DM. These di...

Public health arguments for collecting hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) data, particularly in clinical settings, should be reframed to place more emphasis on nonmedical determinants of population health. We compare individual- with population-level interpretations of HbA1c titers. This comparison reveals that public health researchers need to pay close atten...

In industrialized societies, more than 1 in 3 dogs and people currently qualify as overweight or obese. Experts in public health expect both these figures to rise. Although clinical treatment remains important, so are public perceptions and social norms. This article presents a thematic analysis of English-language mass media coverage on canine obe...

We examined whether dog-walking among dog-owners correlated with street pattern and proximity to a park area designated for off-leash use. Dog-walking was associated with street pattern and with nearby off-leash areas, but these associations varied by the measure of dog-walking examined (participation versus frequency in a usual week). Intervention...

IntroductionOverview of SyndemicsSyndemic ResearchAnimal-Human Connections in SyndemicsSyndemics in History: Case Study 1A Contemporary Syndemic: Case Study 2Syndemics, Medical Anthropology, And the Future of Global HealthReferences

Media advocacy is a well-established strategy for transmitting health messages to the public. This paper discusses a media advocacy intervention that raised issues about how the public interprets messages about the negative effects of poverty on population health. In conjunction with the publication of a manuscript illustrating how income-related f...

Dog-owners tend to be more physically active than non-owners; however, dogs have also been shown to inhibit physical activity for non-owners, under some circumstances. We conducted a scoping review to identify studies pertaining to the influence of dogs on physical activity for both dog-owners and non-owners, and adopted a critical realist orientat...

Table S1 - Characteristics of Included Studies, Key Findings, and Implications for the Present Review. A summary of studies included in this scoping review, tabulating for each the complete citation, methods, population and contextual factors, intervention being evaluated, key findings relevant to the present review, and implications regarding dogs...

Data Extraction Form. The standard form which the authors used to extract relevant data from all studies included in this scoping review.

In general dog-owners are more physically active than non-owners, however; it is not known whether dog-ownership can influence seasonal fluctuations in physical activity. This study examines whether dog-ownership influences summer and winter patterns of neighbourhood-based walking among adults living in Calgary, Canada. A cohort of adults, randomly...

This article introduces the concept of trans-biopolitics to account for complexity in the intermingling of animal and human bodies, with particular attention to diseases capable of crossing the species divide from animals to humans. While zoonotic diseases never disappeared, they had re-emerged as pressing concerns by the 21st century. The concept...

Pharmacy practice increasingly revolves around obtaining and interpreting information. We investigated whether and how pharmacy practice researchers design their studies in ways that acknowledge verbal communication between pharmacists and patients with diabetes. We conducted a scoping review of pharmacists' interventions with patients previously d...

This study explored whether previous experiences with human diabetes influenced how people perceived and responded to the onset of diabetes in a companion animal, and if the experience of diabetic pet care might influence people's thinking and actions in relation to human health. We conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with sixteen (16)...

Sampling in the absence of accurate or comprehensive information routinely poses logistical, ethical, and resource allocation challenges in social science, clinical, epidemiological, health service and population health research. These challenges are compounded if few members of a target population know each other or regularly interact. This paper...

While the media are a significant source of information for the public on science and technology, journalists are often accused of providing only a partial picture by neglecting the points of view of vulnerable stakeholders. This paper analyzes the press coverage of four controversial health interventions in order to uncover what voices are treated...

Medical specialists play a pivotal role in health innovation evaluation and policy making. Their influence derives not only from their expertise, but also from their social status and the power of their professional organisations. Little is known, however, about how medical specialists determine what makes a health innovation desirable and why. Our...

A syndemic involves two or more afflictions that, by interacting synergistically, contribute to excess burdens of disease. A syndemic approach to prevention, meanwhile, focuses on connections among health-related problems, considers those connections when developing health policies, and aligns with forces for social change. In this short report, we...

AThis paper looks at the entangled histories of animal-human relationship and modem surgery. It starts with the various different roles animals have in surgery--patients, experimental models and organ providers--and analyses where these seemingly contradictory positions of animals come from historically. The analyses is based on the assumption that...

If people express salient beliefs and values in caring for pets then it is worth considering that dogs and housecats are routinely treated using the biomedical armamentarium. To investigate animal-human connections in the treatment of dogs and housecats for diabetes, we conducted ethnographic interviews in Canada with 12 pet owners and six health p...

This paper contrasts the perceptions of Canadians who are food-secure with the perceptions of Canadians who are food-insecure through the different meanings that they ascribe to a popular food product known as Kraft Dinner®. Data sources included individual interviews, focus group interviews, and newspaper articles. Our thematic analysis shows that...

This paper asks whether, when seeking to reach the public, interest in the health of pets merits consideration. Our data set consisted of 128 items from Canadian media coverage, 1996–2006, that dealt with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) as well as with cats, dogs or both. Three main messages regarding pet health and human health were identif...