by Dawn Morrison

Dr. Haorui Wu, Professor in Dalhousie’s School of Social Work and Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Resilience, will help lead a new national research network exploring how the relationships between people and animals can strengthen health, resilience and community well-being.

Dr. Wu is a co-director on a new $2.5-million Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Grant, Establishing a Network for Human-Animal Connections Research and Collaboration. Led by principal investigator Dr. Colleen Dell of the University of Saskatchewan, the five-year initiative (2026–2031) will bring together researchers, community organizations and knowledge users from across the country to advance research on the connections between people and animals, using what the team calls a One Health Social Science approach.

'It’s the kind of national, cross-disciplinary effort that hasn’t existed in Canada before,' says Dr. Wu.

"This is the first research of this kind conducted in Canada,” says Dr. Wu. “Different disciplines have their own disciplinary-focused approach; for example, psychology looks at how human-animal interactions support people’s psychological health. But we don’t have an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary team working together on this. We’ve built a team with scholars from social science, health science and natural science, and we work together and apply our knowledge so we can move the research forward. That is just one exciting aspect of this research.”

Human-animal interaction is a broad field, spanning companion animals, agricultural animals, zoo animals, laboratory animals and wildlife. The new network is organized into five research streams. Dr. Wu co-leads the network’s Social Capital stream alongside Dr. Dell, with a focus on companion animals and service animals in the context of disaster and community resilience — an extension of his long-standing research into resilience, climate change and environmental justice.

Research shows that many people are reluctant to evacuate during emergencies if they can’t bring their pets with them, creating risk for both people and animals.

"Every time there is an evacuation order, a lot of people refuse to leave because they don’t want to be separated from their pets,” says Dr. Wu. “That is a major issue, because our disaster response systems need to switch from the human-centric approach to a multispecies approach to support people and their pets together. We need more animal-friendly facilities to support them.”

The same dynamic, he notes, plays out in other kinds of crisis: people fleeing domestic violence situations sometimes delay leaving because a shelter won’t accept their pet. Dr. Wu is separately leading a postdoctoral project on animal-friendly housing in Nova Scotia that examines how the province’s housing crisis has made it harder for people with pets to find a place to live.

Just as important to Dr. Wu as the research itself is what happens to it afterward.

"We don’t want the research just to be published as papers,” says Dr. Wu. “We really hope the research knowledge can be translated into community-based strategies to support people.”

The network’s partners include SPCAs and humane societies, veterinary clinics, and social service organizations, who help identify the field’s most urgent needs and receive research findings back to inform their programs.

“Real research should make a real, community-based impact,” he says. “And eventually, we would like to change policy, see how policy can really support these things.”

Five research streams

The network’s work is organized into five streams, each pairing academic leads with community and clinical partners from across the country.

Social Capital led by Wu & Dell, in partnership with Community Veterinary Outreach; the Saskatchewan Provincial Association of Transition Houses and Services; the Saskatchewan SPCA; St. John Ambulance Saskatchewan.

Wellbeing led by Williamson & Binfet, in partnership with the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction; B.A.R.K.; PAWS Your Stress.

Social Systems led by Gillett & Grant, in partnership with the Mayo Clinic; Waypoint; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; Correctional Service Canada.

Wholism led by McGinnis (Snowshoe) & Woodsworth, in partnership with the Muscowpetung Saulteaux Nation; Meadow Lake Tribal Council; the Native American Humane Society; Save REZ Dogs; Equine Institute International.

Ethics led by Chalmers & Carver, in partnership with AUDEMUS Service Dogs; the Atlas Institute; St. John Ambulance Canada.

A One Health approach

The network’s guiding framework, One Health Social Science, treats people, animals and their shared environment as inseparable contributors to health and well-being.

“Based on the One Health definition, humans, animals and their surrounding environment are all connected, and they all contribute to health and well-being,” says Dr. Wu. “Most research on assistance animals only talks about the benefits animals bring to human beings, but it never considers that animals are our co-inhabitants on this earth. We also need to think about their welfare. That’s a social justice issue as well.”

Advancing the Faculty of Health’s strategic goals

For Dalhousie’s Faculty of Health (which has committed to boldly accelerating research and innovation and championing health equity as it works to “engage, explore and educate to advance health”), the partnership is a clear example of the kind of interdisciplinary, community-engaged research the Faculty is working to grow.

“The Faculty of Health’s priority is healthy people and healthy communities — that’s directly aligned with our strategic plan,” says Dr. Wu. “When we talk about health, we use an expanded approach that doesn’t only focus on human beings, but also on our co-inhabitants, the animals, and the environment around us.”

The network will also create new opportunities for Dalhousie students, reflecting the Faculty’s interprofessional education mandate.

“We will engage research assistants from the Faculty of Health, and we’d also like to engage students from the Faculty of Agriculture’s veterinary technician programs,” says Dr. Wu. “Putting students into a multidisciplinary team gives them peer-learning opportunities and a more comprehensive understanding of health issues from different professional perspectives, not just individual health, but collective, community-level health as well.”

Dr. Wu says he’d welcome the chance to help build new interprofessional courses drawing on colleagues in the Faculties of Dentistry and Medicine as the network develops.

Looking ahead

Over the network’s five-year mandate, Dr. Wu hopes the work will build public understanding of the benefits of human-animal relationships at the grassroots level, strengthen collaboration between researchers and community-based practitioners, and ultimately generate the kind of evidence that can inform policy.

As co-director, Dr. Wu will help guide the network’s national research agenda while contributing his own expertise in resilience, disaster risk reduction and environmental justice. For Dalhousie and its Faculty of Health, the partnership offers a chance to help shape a distinctly Canadian, interdisciplinary approach to a question that touches nearly every community: how the bond between people and animals can make both healthier and more resilient.