One Health Movement News / One Health Topics 'in' the News

CDC’s One Health Office recognizes that the health of people is connected to the health of animals and our shared environment. A One Health approach encourages collaborative efforts of many experts (like disease detectives, laboratorians, physicians, and veterinarians) working across human, animal, and environmental health to improve the health of people and animals, including pets, livestock, and wildlife.

Check out the newest fact sheet to learn more about CDC's One Health work in the United States and around the world to protect the health of people, animals, and the environment.

StopLyme is a new public awareness campaign joining veterinarians and pediatricians to stop a common enemy: Lyme disease. While this tick-borne disease can’t be spread directly between dogs and people, if your dog has been exposed to ticks that spread Lyme disease, you may have been too. To listen to the audio recording on Pet World Radio go to: http://www.petworldradio.net/show-582-time-to-stop-lyme/.

Key findings on who gets sick and why from the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium are being shared at One Health for the Real World: zoonoses, ecosystems and wellbeing, a high-level international symposium taking place at the Zoological Society of London this week.

"On the surface, it might seem like we had a really mild flu season.  As 2015 came to a close and most were making plans for the New Year, more than 13,000 people were tested for seasonal influenza A in a single week. Of those, 157 were positive, and one additional novel A infection was confirmed, reflecting an unusually low level of human influenza activity across the nation so far this season.

However, animals haven’t been quite so lucky.  Last year saw a number of influenza A outbreaks in several different species, including horses, dogs, birds and pigs. 

Outbreaks that start in an animal population might not stay there.   One Health, the concept that animal, human and environmental health are connected,  can help us work more effectively with partners across different disciplines, such as doctors, veterinarians, ecologists, and public health experts, to identify and address emerging threats to health that start in animal populations.  

Global ecologic research has confirmed that influenza A viruses are especially likely to make the jump from animal to human hosts.  Influenza A viruses are able to mutate easily causing large-scale or even global outbreaks. They are responsible for all six historical pandemics and the only flu strain with the capability to present such a threat in the future."

Pioneers of the One Health movement to blend human, veterinary and environmental health are gaining respect, epidemic by epidemic, but capturing the attention of the human health care establishment remains a challenge.

“You have to take the long view,” acknowledged Laura H. Kahn, MD, MPH, of the One Health Initiative team. “It took people over a century to realize the significance of basic sanitation, and lots of countries don’t even have that.”

In recent years, the emergence of several highly pathogenic zoonotic diseases in humans has led to...