Background

One Health is an integrated, unifying approach to balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. It uses the close, interdependent links among these fields to create new surveillance and disease control methods.

For example, the way land is used can impact animal habitats and put humans and wildlife into closer contact. Weather patterns, drought, and flooding can affect insect populations, agricultural practices, human migration, and pathogen spread. Trade in live, wild animals can increase the likelihood of infectious diseases jumping over to people (called disease spillover).

The COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on the interconnections between people, animals, and ecosystems and highlighted the need to strengthen the One Health approach, with a greater emphasis on connections to animal health and the environment.

In this lesson, learners are introduced to the concept of One Health in the context of a fungal pathogen that has been identified as an emerging multi-drug resistant pathogen with the potential for high mortality and global spread.

Source: World Health Organization https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/one-health

Additional Background Resources:

UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine – One Health Institute:
https://ohi.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/

One Health: A new definition for a sustainable and healthy future:
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1010537

American Society for Microbiology – Fungal Pathogens of Humans, Animals, and Plants:
https://asm.org/Reports/One-Health-Fungal-Pathogens-of-Humans,-Animals,-an