One Health Publications

… action plan for the ‘One Health‘ approach, an initiative…

HIGHLIGHTS The Andhra Pradesh Social Workers Association (APSA) offered technical support to the State government in formulating an appropriate action plan for the ‘One Health’ approach, an initiative highlighted by the World Health Organisation and the Union government.

At a glance

By collaborating effectively with individuals from many fields, public health professionals can prevent outbreaks of RVF and better protect the health of people. When professionals from different disciplines work together to protect the health of people and animals, this is One Health in action.

Background

In late 1997, a disease outbreak began in East Africa. In three months, 90,000 people became sick and almost 500 people died. Many animals in the region also died, causing economic difficulties for the people who relied on these animals for milk, meat, and as a trading commodity. The loss of human lives and animals was devastating for the communities. The cause of this outbreak was the Rift Valley fever virus.

The health of humans, animals, plants, and ecosystems is closely interconnected. Any change in relations among them can increase the risk of new human and animal diseases developing and spreading. One Health is an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of persons, animals, and ecosystems. Find out more about the One Health approach in this video produced by the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie (IZSVe), Italian health authority and research organization in the fields of animal health, food safety and zoonoses.

Advancing Health Care in Humans, Animals and the Environment

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OHI team Editor Comments: Please see UTMB One Health Collaborators, an excellent all inclusive interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary example of how current and future medical schools  may consider institutionalizing the ideal One Health concept/approach.  The objective being

“One Health is the collaborative efforts of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally to attain optimal health for people, animals, plants and our environment.”

“One Health implementation will help protect and/or save untold millions of lives in our generation and for those to come.”

“Between animal and human medicine there are no dividing lines–nor should there be.  The object is different but the experience obtained constitutes the basis of all medicine.”

 —Rudolf Virchow, MD (the father of cellular pathology)–

Notably among One-Medicine-One-Health-An-Historic-Perspective-REVISED-SEPT1-2022-from-FEB1-2021.pdf (onehealthinitiative.com) is …

Gregory Gray, MD, MPH

Another remarkable trailblazer physician One Health contributor has been and is Dr. Gregory Gray. Among many extraordinary One Health accomplishments including a Newsletter at Duke University (USA), prior thereto Dr. Gray established the first PhD degree with a concentration in One Health, while directing the University of Florida’s One Health program.  Prof. Gray left Duke and launched an extraordinary One Health Program at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston, TX (USA).

Volume 11, No. 7, July 30, 2024

“Background

FAO promotes the application of the One Health approach as part of the transformation of the agri-food system for the benefit of human, animal, plant and environmental health. This involves a wide range of actors and work related to sustainable agriculture, animal, plant, forest and aquaculture health, food safety, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), nutrition and livelihoods.

Ensuring a One Health approach is essential to make progress in predicting, preventing, detecting and responding to diseases that spread between animals and humans, including antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and food safety, as well as managing environmental determinants of risks to human and animal health, within a set of interlinked disease causation challenges. The adoption of a One Health approach is also fundamental to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). …”

From P4 medicine to one health: a comprehensive approach to health and well-being

“… The FDA and other governments’ regulatory agencies are also collaborating in the One Health Initiative. The One Health Initiative is a movement to forge co-equal, all-inclusive collaborations between physicians, osteopathic physicians, veterinarians, dentists, nurses, and other scientific-health and environmentally related disciplines, including the American Medical Association, American Veterinary Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Nurses Association, American Association of Public Health Physicians, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the U.S. National Environmental Health Association (NEHA).

The health of people, animals, and the environment is intertwined. A health hazard for people may likely be a health hazard for animals. Medical advances in understanding and treating a disease in one species, such as heart disease in people, may be applied to other species. A change in the environment can affect all living things, from people to animals to plants. For example, the Covid-19 pandemic was probably caused by people encroaching on new habitats and bringing bats that were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus into the open air market in Hunan, China. As humans continue to encroach on previously sparsely inhabited ecosystems, new zoonotic viruses may emerge.

The One Health Initiative recognizes this inter-connectedness and advocates a comprehensive approach to health and environmental problems versus a piecemeal approach. By building bridges between physicians, veterinarians, environmental scientists, and public health professionals, the initiative aims to “promote, improve, and defend the health and well-being of all species.

We are all in this together. For humanity to survive, we must do a better job of working together to solve the problems we all face from global climate change and other threats to public health. There is a group called the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) that is supporting this effort ¹⁰. It is a global community connected through systems theory, science and practice. The ISSS is a community of researchers, learners, and practitioners who are devoted to transdisciplinary inquiry into the nature of complex systems and the application of systems approaches for transformative change.”

Journal of Global, Public and One Health – Focusing on the survival of planet earth in Website: www.jgpoh.com

Corresponding author: Prof. Dr. med. Ulrich Laaser DTM&H, MPH: Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Public Health, Bielefeld-University, Bielefeld, Germany; Email: ulrich.laaser@uni-bielefeld.de

“Clemson University’s College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) is on a mission to produce highly skilled and caring veterinarians to serve various roles in the work force. From small and large animal clinicians to those working with zoos and exotic animal species, CVM veterinarians’ expertise and interests will run the gamut. Some key areas of the profession are the high-demand fields like public health and regulatory services.

“We want to expose students to all of the amazing opportunities that exist in the world of public health, public service and research,” said CVM Founding Dean Steven Marks. “To fill this need, the CVM is making connections and building relationships with key stakeholders now.” …”

“… During the event, PAHO Director, Jarbas Barbosa, and Atul Gawande, USAID Assistant Administrator for Global Health engaged in a high-level dialogue to discuss the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, the interrelation between health, economic, and climate security, the rise in cases of bird flu and the importance of a One Health approach, as well as priority areas of collaboration moving forward. …”

“Abstract

Aim: The United Nations SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) database, inaugurated in 2015, contains extensive and considerable information to follow up on the progress of the SDGs. We shall, therefore, explore in this paper whether the exclusive use of the easily accessible SDG database and a limited selection of 17 suitable indicators, i.e., one indicator per Goal, allows for a stable analysis of progress. We aim to provide a methodology for easy use at the sub-national level on the initiative of non-governmental organizations and communities evaluating their activities towards One Health implementation.  …

… Conclusion: Progress towards the target year 2030 is too slow despite the growing knowledge that most world regions’ current economic, social, and environmental trajectories are unsustainable. A new tri- or four-partite global agency which has new representation from civil society could address many of the problems identified by paving the ways for bottom-up commitment, starting from monitoring achievements of the SDGs at the local level. The SOHI-Index can fulfil its intended purpose to support bottom-up commitment, requiring only one measurable indicator per SDG but no experts and no weighting of the selected indicators.”

Also, please see Laaser-U-et-al.-SOHI-Cover-note.pdf (jgpoh.com)

This work is published in Nature Communications in the paper, “A One Health framework for exploring zoonotic interactions demonstrated through a case study.”