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Advance One Health or... Impede One Health? – An opinion     By One Health Initiative Autonomous pro bono Team: Laura H. Kahn, MD, MPH, MPP ▪ Bruce Kaplan, DVM ▪ Thomas P. Monath, MD ▪ Jack Woodall, PhD ▪ Lisa A. Conti, DVM, MPH        Posted One Health Initiative website NEWS page January 4, 2013     “Let us go forward together...”                 Winston Churchill     One Health interest and implementation actitivities have literally “taken off” during the last two years in the U.S. and worldwide.  This is evidenced by the numerous national and international meetings, symposia, “official” governmental agencies and unofficial organizations, university institutions and grass roots individuals as well as “VIPs” raising the banner for more One Health performance and execution.    Examples include:   ·         A host of recent VIPs and prominent organizational endorsements have encouraged and helped by articulating One Health positions and endorsements, e.g. American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Public Health Physicians, American Nurses Association, United States Animal Health Association, and the U.S. National League of Cities. http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/supporters.php and http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/endorsements.php ·         Emerging One Health organizations, symposia and publications have an all-inclusive policy, e.g. the U.S. One Health Commission www.onehealthcommission.org, the 1st International One Health Congress meeting in Australia,  http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/publications/OneHealthSocietyProposalAmendedversion.pdf, Veterinaria Italiana Journal http://www.izs.it/vet_italiana/index.htm, and Infection, Ecology and Epidemiology One Health Journal (Sweden) http://www.infee.se/infeecommunity/node/14.  The One Health Initiative team/website www.onehealthinitiative.com has always been all inclusive and offered free participation. ·         Since the landmark American Veterinary Medical Association’s (AVMA) One Health taskforce report http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/taskForce.php a host of legitimate and useful publications, white papers and blogs have appeared with repetitive dissertations from different worldwide perspectives as to how to proceed.    Essentially, these accumulative views all express goals for the classic management principles for planning, organizing and executing One Health into the scheme of providing more efficacious public health and clinical health care for society with the reasonable incorporation of One Health principles.   However, from our viewpoint, it now appears (January 2013) that the One Health movement is precariously trending towards many factions or “silos” vying for shortsighted supremacy and/or One Health ownership, absent the true spirit of One Health (formerly called “One Medicine”), i.e. the collaborative, interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary principle of sharing and outreach beyond organizational, institutional, national and international boundaries...previously admonished in http://www.izs.it/vet_italiana/2009/45_3/377.pdf:   “...no single person, no single health profession, no single organization, and no single nation or people invented or owns One Health. It is an all-inclusive, co-equal endeavor that belongs to all of humanity.  A caveat: while honest debate over efficacious process should be welcome, factionalism should not.”   Hopefully all groups will begin to recognize that long-term, it will be much more efficacious for all to work together and share the benefits equally in the true spirit of One Health.  Everyone working on the same page is a tall order.  This will require altruistic individual, national and international leadership emergence—with emphasis on “leadership”... otherwise, in the words of one One Health VIP, “the life protecting-life saving One Health movement will likely wither on the vine”.  Cui bono?     Note: The One Health Initiative team/website welcomes and encourages thoughtful opinions and views being submitted for posting.  Please send copy with under 500 words and no more than five (5) references included to kkm@onehealthinitiative.com.  Also, identify your affiliation(s) and background with an updated CV.  Articles will be edited and returned to qualified author(s) for final approval prior to posting unless accepted verbatim as submitted.