One Health

Chad Swanson’s YouTube video that we watched in our last class addressed the concept of transformational change and encouraged individuals to consider the concept of health from a more holistic perspective; specifically he explored his concept of “systems thinking for capacity in health.”  Despite the fact that this concept holds considerable promise for beginning to address the inherently symbiotic relationships present in both good and ill health, many public health strategies continue to address health issues vertically. 

The One Health Initiative attempts to shift the public health paradigm to be more inclusive, and thus ostensibly more efficacious.  One Health considers not only a holistic approach to global human health, but also a more holistic approach to environmental and animal health.  The Initiative recognizes that vaccination and treatment efforts hold relatively little value unless the space surrounding the target populations in question has the capacity to support them.  It also addresses the potential for zoonotic illnesses and degraded environment to impact human health on multiple levels.  Unless these issues are addressed collaboratively, public health measures will in effect be contradicted by re-emergent diseases that may have become less salient at some point. 

One Health’s vision of improving the lives of all species through collaborative efforts focuses on seven primary goals[1]:

• 1. Joint educational efforts between human medical, veterinary medical schools, and schools of public health and the environment;
• 2. Joint communication efforts in journals, at conferences, and via allied health networks;
• 3. Joint efforts in clinical care through the assessment, treatment and prevention of cross-species disease transmission;
• 4. Joint cross-species disease surveillance and control efforts in public health;
• 5. Joint efforts in better understanding of cross-species disease transmission through comparative medicine and environmental research;
• 6. Joint efforts in the development and evaluation of new diagnostic methods, medicines and vaccines for the prevention and control of diseases across species and;
• 7. Joint efforts to inform and educate political leaders and the public sector through accurate media publications.

These concepts have been embraced and supported by the CDC as well through the establishment of a One Health Commission and a growing body of research considering the efficacy of such an epistemology.[2]

Interestingly, this approach is not a particularly novel idea to much of the global indigenous population and other “traditional” societies.  Indigenous populations, particularly those that have retained hunting and gathering traditions recognize the necessity of respecting and caring for the surrounding natural environment.  Is “one health” simply another example of the western medicine co-option of indigenous medical practices; or, is it recognition of a failure of current system and how critical it is to build more sustainable systems?   

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[1] http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/mission.php

[2] https://www.onehealthcommission.org/en/resources/centers_for_disease_control_cdc/

Rabinowitz PM, Kock R, Kachani M, Kunkel R, Thomas J, Gilbert J, et al. Toward proof of concept of a One Health approach to disease prediction and control. Emerg Infect Dis [Internet]. Dec 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1912.130265

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vnPgEP-Ids#!