While One Health is nothing new, it is becoming increasingly important. I had never heard of One Health until I got to college. If it was not for my university’s unique One Health initiative, it is very likely I would still be unaware of this concept– which is quite daunting considering One Health has become something that I am very passionate about.
Put simply, One Health is a trans-disciplinary approach that works locally, regionally, nationally, and globally to attain optimal well-being for:

(1) Society

(2) The environment and

(3) Plants and animals.

It recognizes that, in a global ecosystem, the health of these three elements are inextricably linked to each other.

Factors of One Health

The exponential growth of human populations greatly contributes to the changing interactions between people, the environment, and animals. The human population is growing and expanding into new geographic areas.

This puts people in closer contact with animals and their environment, allowing more opportunity for disease to pass to humans and animals. This raises a public health concern and jeopardizes the important roles that animals serve to society.

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With a rapidly growing human population and advanced technology, the world is more connected than ever. This allows for mass movements of people, animals, animal products, and plants for international travel and trade. As a result of such interaction from various locations, diseases can swiftly carry across the globe.

One last noteworthy factor is changes in climate and land use. The current climate crisis and continued unsustainable environmental degradation create a domino effect of damages to the elements that make up the One Health triad. Disruptions in environmental conditions and habitats provide new avenues for disease transmission.

One Health and COVID-19

COVID-19 captures the essence of why and how employing One Health is key to ensuring a healthy and sustainable planet.

stacks of wood from deforestation
Environment & Habitat: There is a reported link between the rapid destruction of natural habitats to the spread of COVID-19. Rainforests of Southeast Asia have been reduced by 50% over the last 70 years, putting disease-carrying animals in closer contact with humans than ever before.

Measuring deforestation rates is a great, but unfortunate, way to predict future pandemic outbreaks. It is important to recognize that the continued encroachment upon the natural habitats of wildlife brings deadly diseases that are capable of spilling over from wildlife to humans.

Plants & Animals: While the root cause of COVID-19 has yet to be definitively determined, there is substantial evidence to support that there was a spill-over of the COVID-19 virus from a bat host to humans at a wildlife trade market in Wuhan, China. The destruction of habitat placed bats and humans in close proximity and allowed for easy disease transmission.
People & Society: Considering COVID-19 has been declared a global pandemic, this virus has impacted people across the globe in a myriad of ways. Rapid advances in technology coupled with great human population size allow infected people, animals, or meat to move further from the source of infection, faster. Society now faces a public health crisis and the related consequences.

Operationalizing One Health

The key to executing the One Health approach is proper collaboration, coordination, and communication across all disciplines, institutions, and countries. The sharing of respective knowledge amongst diverse stakeholders serves as the basis of working towards global ecosystem health.

In the time since COVID-19 has been declared a pandemic, amazing examples of transdisciplinary relationships have been showcased. Collaboration among professionals in human health (doctors, nurses, public health practitioners, epidemiologists), animal health (veterinarians, paraprofessionals, agricultural workers), environmental health (ecologists, wildlife experts), and other areas of expertise is essential for successful public health intervention.

Other participants such as policymakers, local communities, and economists are also relevant in operationalizing One Health.

In sum, issues at the animal-human-environment interface cannot be successfully handled by one person, organization, or sector alone. Only through practicing collaboration across all disciplines can the One Health approach achieve optimal well-being for people, animals, and the shared environment.