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“One Health in ACTION”   New One Health Course Launched – University of California Global Health Institute (USA) – April 2010   The One Health Center of expertise was launched as part of the University of California Global Health Institute in November 2009 (http://www.ucghi.universityofcalifornia.edu/). In April, One Health Center faculty at UC Davis and UC Riverside launched a two-credit course on One Health that was co-taught by Michael S. Wilkes, MD (UCD Medical School) and Co-Directors of the Center Patricia A. Conrad, DVM, PhD and Anil Deolalikar, PhD. Both students and faculty in the course represented the unique transdisciplinary focus of the One Health approach to global health. Teleconferencing technology was utilized in the biweekly two-hour sessions to link the six medical students and residents at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento with the nine graduate students at each of the main campuses in Davis and Riverside.    The graduate students enrolled in the course at UC Davis came from International and Community Nutrition, International Agricultural Development, the Center for Health & the Environment, and the School of Veterinary Medicine. At UC Riverside, the graduate students were drawn from the Departments of Entomology, Environmental Sciences, and Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology, and Sociology. Similarly, the faculty who participated from all three sites came from diverse disciplines, including economics, microbiology, epidemiology, medical ethics, environmental engineering, nutrition, medicine, environmental public health, and parasitology.   The overall goal of the course was to introduce students to the core concepts involved in One Health, particularly the promotion of an integrated transdisciplinary approach to global health problems. Students learned how the health of humans, animals and the ecosystems they share are closely linked. Each session focused on real case problems ranging from water scarcity, waterborne disease and watershed management in Tanzania and Kenya, tsetse fly control in Ethiopia, and zoonotic disease transmission in California. In addition, students were exposed to techniques of cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis of global health interventions.   Students worked in small break-out groups to brain storm about problems and identify solutions to One Health iterative cases.  These were then shared with the entire group of faculty and students via the teleconference systems with audio and video capabilities.   Laurie Harris, DVM, one of the veterinary medical graduate students in the class led a One Health case discussion based on her graduate work on the health of the mountain gorillas and neighboring human communities in Rwanda. Afterwards Laurie commented, Leading a One Health discussion was a fun way to share ideas and, thanks to the help of my colleagues, to think more deeply about the interdisciplinary nature and effectiveness of my own research.   Provided June 4, 2010 by the author:   Patricia A. Conrad, DVM, PhD Co-director for the new One Health Center of Expertise Professor, Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology 5311 Vet Med 3A School of Veterinary MedicineUniversity of CaliforniaDavis, CA 95616 http://faculty.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/faculty/paconrad/ and   Cheryl Scott, RN, DVM, MPVM Calvin Schwabe One Health Project Program Director UCDavis School of Veterinary Medicine Deans Office Surge IV RM 119 http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/onehealth/