Prioritizing key interfaces where spillover could occur when carrying out disease surveillance creates the highest return on lowered risk. While surveillance cannot occur in every corner of a forest ecosystem, the areas in which humans could interact with wildlife inherently have the highest risk. By targeting surveillance efforts risk managers can capture the most pertinent information and create the most effective early warning systems. With proper surveillance systems in place, the Howler monkey mortality event was rapidly identified and the appropriate notification system was enacted.

Rapid detection and identification of pathogens is fundamental to prevent diseases at the wildlife-human interphase. Thus, establishing local laboratory capacities and identifying strategies for its sustainability in developing countries has to be a priority in any strategy aiming to improve human and animal (including wildlife) health.

In countries where education and actualization possibilities are limited, especially on novel topics such as wildlife health and surveillance, providing training possibilities to different stakeholders was a good strategy to generate local human capacities and awareness, while engaging people from different sectors and geographic areas to help on wildlife diseases surveillance. Following these trainings, the appropriate stakeholders were empowered with an understanding of what to do when wildlife is experiencing a disease event, who should take samples, the safety methods to implement, and the proper channels of communication. By implementing multi-disciplinary, inter-sectorial and inter-institutional trainings, dialogue, good communication and long-term collaborations among the diverse project´s partners from different sectors were facilitated, while the inclusion of the public health sector enabled the quick and efficient response to prevent a spillover event during the yellow fever epizooty detected on howler monkeys.

Having a leading organization (the Wildlife Conservation Society in Bolivia) with a long history of work in the country, with a well based experience and good institutional relationships established, was crucial to facilitate the rapid implementation and good development of the PREDICT project activities. During the time that PREDICT was working in Bolivia (from 2010 to 2013), efforts were done to facilitate the establish a national Zoonoses Surveillance Plan where the Ministry of Health, the National Veterinary Service and the General Directorate of Biodiversity could ensure a permanent and sustainable collaboration among sectors to prevent zoonotic diseases in the country. Unfortunately, this goal couldn´t be accomplished in the project period, nevertheless, the basis for such collaborative framework were established and many inter-institutional and multi-disciplinary collaborations to investigate further non-human primates yellow fever events and rodent-borne diseases, took place in the following years as a result.

• WinS/Three Star monitoring and recognition system (Philippines, Lao PDR, Cambodia, Indonesia) has helped to move WinS improvments forward, but is a process that takes time and needs to involve the Ministry in the driver´s seat and partners willing to align and support
• Data visualization via WinS dashboards can be a powerful tool to create transparency and allow schools, districts and provinces to develop a sense of where they stand relative to others - which in turn might motivate further improvements
• The WinS/Three Star monitoring system in Cambodia and the availability of national data proved crucial to plan for COVID-19 response measures and support and illustrated the practical application of monitoring data for various ministries involved
• Monitoring and self assessment serve as a strong capacity development measure - through careful design schools can be guided on what to prioritze and how to progress through improvements over time