The Lao People’s Democratic Republic has successfully implemented One Health projects for several decades; however, the organizational network has not been described and scaling up efforts have been limited. This study explored how One Health approaches have been put into action in the country, with a focus on how research on implementation could help scale up these efforts.

Data from organizations involved in One Health projects over the past five years were collected through key-informant interview or workshops. The network was investigated using a mixture of quantitative network analysis and qualitative thematic analysis.

A key finding of the study was that One Health projects lacked the implementation science and research required for scale up. This meant that even cost-effective projects struggled to go to scale. It was recommended that organizations should conduct IR and address scaling up in their proposals, and that donors should endorse and fund this approach.