University Archives

Diseases that pass between animals and humans (zoonoses) are often considered to be products of the rural environment. However, dense urban populations can also be at risk of zoonoses. As urban agriculture expands to include agricultural animals, it is important to monitor associated outbreaks of zoonotic diseases. Yet their representation in peer-reviewed literature is still inconsistent and frequently lacking. This research is the first part of a systematic review evaluating how commonly outbreaks of zoonoses associated with urban agriculture are reported in the scientific literature. Relevant papers from the Biological Science Database were retrieved using three specific keyword combinations, which were Urban Farming/Zoonoses, Urban/Zoonoses, and Urban Agriculture/Zoonoses. Each unique keyword combination represented a separate perspective in the human-animal interactions in urban contexts. This aspect of the project  is focusing on determining how utilization of different search terms within the same database methods affects the discoverability of relevant research. Overlapping articles were found across searches, but each term combination also identified unique combinations. These findings indicate that use of multiple search terms during the first phase of a systematic review may help to capture a broader sample of papers relevant to the greater study.