New One Health course on Coursera: Bats, Ducks, and Pandemics: An Introduction to One Health Policy
06/29/2020
The concept of One Health provides a useful framework for examining complex health issues such as food safety and security, emerging and vector-borne diseases, and antimicrobial resistance. It can be used to analyze government policies to determine if they are effective in improving health and well-being.
- Agriculture is the foundation of civilization. …. But agriculture comes with costs including environmental and ecosystem destruction and the emergence of zoonotic diseases.
- Antibiotics are the foundation of modern medicine. But antibiotics have come with costs too, including antimicrobial resistance and potentially harmful changes to human and animal microbiomes.
This interdisciplinary course covers diverse subjects of basic epidemiology, public health, public policy, basic microbiology, food safety, and security, zoonotic diseases, sanitation and hygiene, antimicrobial resistance, environmental and ecosystem health, and the national and international organizations that oversee health, agriculture, and the environment. Disease outbreaks including Influenza, Q fever, and Ebola are discussed. While the course was developed and recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic, the concepts learned very much apply to it.
