January 24 – 26, 2017, Washington DC, USA
Over the past decade, the term One Health has been rationally applied to historic and evolving roles including research and application in the fields of: comparative morphology and physiology, animal models of human diseases, translational medicine, zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance. In recent years, One Health has added to those areas greater attention on understanding and prevention of infectious disease transmission at the wildlife/domestic animal/human interface.
The Tenets of One Health: Addressing the changing threats of disease emergence and environmental change to biodiversity conservation
Global Health Group International presented the following discussion during the 17th National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and the Environment
Over the past decade, the term One Health has been rationally applied to historic and evolving roles including research and application in the fields of: comparative morphology and physiology, animal models of human diseases, translational medicine, zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance. In recent years, One Health has added to those areas greater attention on understanding and prevention of infectious disease transmission at the wildlife/domestic animal/human interface. Today, One Health is increasingly focusing on the interdependence of human health, animal and plant health and the necessary backdrop of ecosystem integrity and a strengthening international sustainable framework. Accordingly, for the near- and long-term future, One Health has little choice but to engage in the study, mitigation and prevention of daunting societal challenges. To succeed, One Health groups will need to address not only emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, but also the broader stressors that affect overcrowded and stressed human, domestic animal and wildlife populations.
Scientifically, One Health may be best described by breaking it down into its core beliefs (tenets), and identifying the areas of relevant scientific knowledge and their associated concepts and theories: 1) The health of human’s, animals and environment are interdependent; 2) The interaction of humans and animals (domestic and wild) together with the environment must be studied to understand most infectious diseases – their origin, pathogen evolution, transmission dynamics and epidemiology; 3) Contact between and the spatial or environmental co-location of human and animal host species’ populations (e.g., human-wildlife population interface) is key; and 4) Human health and well-being depends on animal health and well-being and both require healthy ecosystems operationalized (made practical) in terms of life support “services” natural ecological processes provide.
Efforts to get this done and to intervene to improve One Health will need to be both “bottom/local up” and “top/national/international down.” Innovative participatory methodologies operationalizing knowledge flow among stakeholders – everyday citizens, professionals from a broad array of ecological, social and health sciences, policy makers – will be needed to consensually and sustainably address the “real-life” problems our society is facing. One Health interventions require practical, sustainable and effective solutions with a keen understanding of local socio-economic factors as well as a solid grasp of complex regional, national and international health and environmental policies. One Health represents a time-sensitive opportunity for practitioners to apply their expertise to give rise to simultaneous benefits for humans, animals, and the environment. Such nested efforts are already underway and they should be expanded and built upon with great determination and vigor.
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