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One Health

A collaborative, transdisciplinary approach to achieve positive health outcomes

One Health

What is One Health?

The One Health concept is a strategy to connect the spheres of health for humans, animals, plants, and the environment.  One Health also investigates the relationship of the arts and humanities to health, healthcare, medicine, and medical education. Such interdisciplinary efforts seek to advance communication and collaboration between many fields. Effective execution of the One Health strategy will expand our base of scientific knowledge, improve the quality of life for countless lives around the globe, and help ensure the sustainable management of issues in health care for future generations. This initiative encourages organizations in academia, industry, government, and research fields to support efforts on local, national, and global scales. 

The wide scope of One Health encompasses many aspects of our lives, including the following current issues:  

  • Comparative medicine
  • Human-animal bonds
  • Land use and resource conservation
  • Biodiversity
  • Medical Humanities 
  • Health Humanities 
  • Climate change
  • Water safety and security
  • Antimicrobial resistance mitigation
  • Disease response, tracking, and prevention
  • Economic systems and global trade
  • Food security
  • Occupational health risks
  • Agricultural production
  • Soil health
  • Environmental Humanities
  • Narrative Medicine

Scholarly Publications

Over the last 10 years, the world has been threatened by the increasing prevalence of zoonoses, epidemics, antimicrobial resistance, chronic diseases, and environmental pollution. This article posits the application of the One Health approach will enable us to rigorously evaluate the consequences of human actions and integrate interdisciplinary solutions to improve the health of humans, animals, plants, and ecosystems. The authors present a list of barriers that must be overcome to enact effective One Health solutions. Opens PDF in a new tab.

While a One Health approach to research can be quite effective, its implementation is complex. This article supports One Health researchers’ efforts by providing a framework to guide the design, planning, implementation, collaboration, collection of data, and analysis methods in One Health research. Opens PDF in a new tab.

Because relatively few publications assess outcomes in human, animal, plant, and environmental spheres simultaneously, open access literature is of great importance to One Health methodologies. This article examines the percentage of open access literature from each major discipline in One Health. Opens PDF in a new tab.