One Health: The Need for Interdisciplinary Research and Action

Integrating human, animal, environmental - commonly referred to as One Health - and anthropology aspects in global health research and action is fostering a comprehensive understanding of burden of disease and effective ways towards reduction, as well as health emergency risks and effective outbreak prevention, readiness and response. While OH is universally accepted as a concept, all too often the different disciplines work side by side instead of interdisciplinary, and data are not brought together in a sufficiently integrated way. Moreover, the OH concept has been criticized for its over-strong focus on zoonoses, and its neglect of direct and indirect environmental effects on human and animal health. A need for context-specific OH promotion and protection strategies at the level of communities has also been voiced.

Examples of ongoing research projects in Nigeria, Gambia and Thailand will:

1) highlight the need for research and action that integrate ecology, human and animal health to understand pandemic risk, and develop interventions that address this including at the community level.

2) illustrate the central role of interdisciplinary research combining advanced microbiology and virology like genomics with anthropology, behavioral science, ecology, bioinformatics and health systems research to generate deep knowledge of the connections between health in humans, animals and the environment;

3) illuminate, how understanding OH at the genomic level allows more precise prediction of spill-over risks and future climate change effects;

4) demonstrate how OH approaches can contribute to health equity at the local, national and global level.