One Health Publications

By Laura H. Kahn, MD, MPH, MPP

This article was originally published on PEAH – Policies for Equitable Access to Health.

IN A NUTSHELL

Public health is a public good and requires public trust to succeed.

Public health is inherently political because the focus is on population health rather than on individual health.

In this article, I will briefly write about the history of public health and will try to explain why the U.S.’s public health policies, particularly its vaccination policies, are deteriorating.

A public health nightmare becoming a “daymare”

Current Environmental Health Reports (2026) 13:3 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40572-026-00522-0 

Abstract Purpose of review

The purpose of this short literature review is to present the state of art in One Health ethics, a new field working with ethics in One Health approaches. These approaches have focused on promoting health for humans, animals, plants, and ecosystems mainly in a scientific way. Ethics has often been left out. The goal is to summarize the main findings of the limited ethics discussion in the field and propose the future way forward for the field. Recent findings There have been several calls for ethics, and the main discussion has mainly focused on (1) the ethical imperative in One Health, (2) the ethical value of ecosystems, (3) normative aspects of health, (4) core ethical concepts, and (5) ethical decision models. Summary For the next decade this field needs to be fully developed and included as a core science within the One Health approaches. To be able to solve the complex problems these approaches are facing, such as the triple crisis (climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss), more scholars need to work with One Health ethics, which still is a rather underdeveloped field of ethics. Three future trends for the field of One Health ethics were proposed; 1) to find ethical decision models, 2) to bridge the gap between anthropocentrism, zoocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism, and 3) how to balance valuation between different species, organisms or levels, or ethics and economy.

Provided to One Health Initiative team website January 26, 2026 by: 

Henrik Lerner, PhD

henrik.lerner@mchs.se

Medical experts from the One Health initiative debunk vaccine myths promoted by RFK Jr. and outline what must be done to protect public health

3. Antimicrobial resistance outside hospitals

“… Antibiotic resistance doesn’t only spread in hospitals. It moves through people, wildlife, crops, wastewater, soil and global trade networks. This broader perspective that takes the principles of One Health into account is essential for understanding how resistance genes travel through ecosystems. …”

Journal of the Formosan Medical Association  Available online 26 September 2025

“… The National One Health Joint Action Plan (2026–2030) represents a fundamental strategic shift from past reactive epidemic responses to proactive, system-wide prevention through integrated cross-sectoral epidemic surveillance, preparedness, and control under a single, unified national governance framework. This will position Taiwan to be well prepared for the rapidly rising threats of emerging pandemics driven by global geopolitical, economic, and environmental crises in the years ahead. …”

“… The work strengthens a multidisciplinary scientific collaboration among leading centers in structural biology, microbiology, cardiometabolism, and biomedical imaging. It places this line of research at the forefront of the design of new biotechnological tools based on modified microorganisms to study and intervene in metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.”

• Home /
• About us /
• Latest News /
• From Earth observations to healthier societies: One Health in action at AmeriGEO Week 2025

“Environmental change, biodiversity loss and human health risks are increasingly connected. Responding to these complex challenges requires a One Health approach that recognises the deep links between ecosystems, animals and people, turning data into action. … By aligning standards, sharing expertise, and co-developing solutions, the GEO community is helping to build healthier ecosystems and societies.”

Streamed live on Jan 10, 2026

Using an interdisciplinary One Health approach, Dr. Laura Kahn will draw upon material from her book, “One Health and the Politics of Covid-19,” to talk about the history, science, research, and politics of coronaviruses. One Health is the concept that human, animal, plant, environmental, and ecosystem health are linked. This is a relatively new term, but an ancient concept recognized by indigenous peoples around the world. Coronaviruses are zoonotic viruses, meaning that they originate in non-human animals (i.e., bats) and spread to humans. The most well-known coronaviruses are Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Covid-19. Unlike SARS and MERS, which emerged in 2002 and 2012, respectively, Covid-19 appears unusual in some of its clinical manifestations. The gold standard evidence used to prove the natural origins of the earlier coronavirus epidemics is lacking with Covid-19. The origin of this virus remains controversial. Coronaviruses were first discovered by veterinarians in the early 1930s. Physicians discovered them in the 1960s while studying “the common cold” but assumed that they were merely nuisance microbes. Medical researchers lost interest in them until the shocking appearance of SARS. Gain-of-function research of pandemic potential pathogens, such as SARS, and the possibility that it might have led to Covid-19, raises concerns about the ethics and risks of this type of research. Dr. Laura H. Kahn is a physician, policy researcher, educator, and author. For almost 20 years, she was a research scholar in the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. Her education and training encompass nursing, medicine, public health, and public policy. A native of California, Dr. Kahn holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing from UC Los Angeles, a doctorate in medicine from the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University and a master’s degree in public policy from Princeton University. Dr. Kahn is a fellow of the American College of Physicians. In 2007, the New Jersey Chapter of the American College of Physicians awarded her with their highest honor, the Laureate Award. In 2014, the American Association of Public Health Physicians awarded her with a Presidential Award for Meritorious Service, and in 2016, the American Veterinary Epidemiology Society (AVES) awarded her with their highest honor for her work in One Health: the K.F. Meyer-James H. Steele Gold Head Cane Award.

Views expressed in this presentation are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Capital Area Skeptics.

A call for a new ethos

Human activities, coupled with compromised ecosystems, can boost the risk of new human and animal diseases developing and spreading. One Health aims to create new surveillance and disease control methods and enhance global health security.