November 3, 2021 is the sixth annual One Health Day [1]. It was initiated in 2016 by the One Health Commission, the One Health Platform, and the One Health Initiative in an effort to bring global awareness to One Health initiatives and to create a cultural movement behind One Health [2]. One Health is still a fairly new field of study, centered around collaborative work between people working in human medicine, veterinary medicine, and environmental health. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of this field, it is essential to create opportunities for connections that are not always fostered by the research environment, where research can become very siloed into one topic, with entire conferences and journals centering on one disease or organism. Events such as One Health Day bring attention to the field, connect interested parties, and introduce more people to the concept.
While the use of the name ‘One Health’ is a fairly recent development, the concepts behind it are not new. Physicians have recognised the impact that the environment has on human health since Hippocrates wrote ‘On water, airs, and places” and more recently when John Snow made the link between contaminated water and cholera outbreaks in London [3,4]. It was Jim Steele, a veterinarian, who did a lot of foundational research in veterinary public health and brought attention to it on a world stage through his work teaching, as well as at the CDC and WHO [5]. Since the beginning of the formalised study of veterinary medicine, public health has been an important component of the work of veterinarians and that continues to this day. All veterinarians champion One Health on the day-to-day, whether treating Fluffy’s fleas, vaccinating racehorses against West Nile Virus, working with farmers to control ringworm in their herd, inspecting meat safety in the abattoir, or conducting pharmaceutical research, the list could go on forever.
While breakthroughs are made in One Health, the truly innovative part of the field is that it encourages thinking in a broader context, examining factors outside of the problem at hand, not just zooming in on one aspect of it. Great strides can be made by approaching problems through the One Health lens, in considering an outbreak of leptospirosis in cattle, one must also consider the threats of zoonosis and food security that might accompany it [6]. While it can be overwhelming to address problems from such a broad view, solutions in one area can have a knock-on effect in others, and solutions are not one size fits all, but a result of cumulative changes, not only vaccination, but also improved land management, biosecurity practices, herd surveillance, and so on. This One Health Day, think about how you can consider One Health in your day, have conversations with friends, family, or colleagues, and let’s work to heal the earth, and each other, together.
References:
CDC One Health (2021) One Health Day. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/one-health-day.html (Accessed: 28 October 2021).
One Health Commission (2021) One Health Day. Available at: https://www.onehealthcommission.org/en/events_since_2001/one_health_day/ (Accessed: 28 October 2021).
Grammaticos, P. C. and Diamantis, A. (2008) ‘Useful known and unknown views of the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates and his teacher Democritus’, Hellenic journal of nuclear medicine, 11(1), pp. 2–4. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18392218/ (Accessed: 28 October 2021).
Begum, F. (2016) ‘Mapping disease: John Snow and Cholera’, Royal College of Surgeons of England. Available at: https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/library-and-publications/library/blog/mapping-disease-john-snow-and-cholera/ (Accessed: 28 October 2021).
Schultz, M. G. (2014) ‘In Memoriam: James Harlan Steele (1913–2013)’, Emerging Infectious Diseases, 20(3). doi: 10.3201/EID2003.IM2003.
Ekstrand, A. and Woodford, N. (2021) ‘Zoonoses Associated With Cattle’, Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee - Washington State University. Available at: https://iacuc.wsu.edu/zoonoses-associated-with-cattle/ (Accessed: 28 October 2021).
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