What can people from different disciplines contribute to One Health?

For the One Health concept to move from “Vision to Fashion” an inter and cross disciplinary true partnership and cooperation is warranted among (but not limited to) the following disciplines:

• Veterinarians, Physicians and Public Health professionals are involved in the regular education on risks of acquiring zoonoses, promotion of food safety, responding to epidemics and pandemics, responding to bioterrorism, and environmental health;
• Para-veterinarians, nurses, paramedics perform and contribute to patient care
• Wildlife scientists also work towards reducing zoonoses and other ecosystem risks;
• Other environmental and public health issues also require the expert opinion of ecologists to understand host-pathogen ecology and methods of studying diseases
• Environmental health professions (to associate how biotic and abiotic factors and behavior influence diseases)
• Industrial hygienists (to understand safe food production)
• Toxicologists (to determine, understand and control environmental contaminants)
• Anthropologists (to understand genesis of risk factors if social tagged)
• Agricultural extension officers (who are key in information dissemination and training of farmers)
• Farmers (who are the main stakeholders in implementing advise given)
• Sociologists (to understand how the thinking and behavior of people influence health)
• Economists (to understand how the world/regional monetary systems affect diseases an health of people and evaluate economic viable systems) and many more others (you can suggest more by commenting!)

This simply tells us that One Health is not a “single driver” concept but is a “multiple spearheaded” concept by a diverse pool of disciplines. To actualize the goals of One health we therefore need to have a multidisciplinary approach with special interest to the problem at hand.

References

• Barrett, Meredith A. and Steven A. Osofsky. 2013. “One Health: Interdependence of People, Other Species, and the Planet,” pp. 364-377 (and online supplement pp. 407(e1)-416(e10) at studentconsult.com), in Katz, D. L., Elmore, J. G., Wild, D. M. G., and S. C. Lucan (eds.) Jekel’s Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Preventive Medicine, and Public Health (4th ed.). Elsevier / Saunders, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• Loh EH, Murray KA, Zambrana-Torrelio C, Hosseini PR, Rostal M, Karesh WB, Daszak P.2013. Ecological approaches to studying zoonoses. Microbiol Spectrum 1(2):OH-0009-2012. doi:10.1128/microbiolspec.OH-0009-2012.
• Welburn Sue. One Health: the 21st century challenge. Veterinary Record 2011;168:614-615 doi:10.1136/vr.d3528
• Image credited to the one health initiative website, http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/about.php