A Healthy Perspective

Excerpt

One Health explicitly demands that we consider the health of humans, animals, plants, and environment in an integrated manner, and appreciate that each impacts in some way on the other. By extension, the science would suggest that to understand and deliver optimal health we would need to work across the various sectors and in multidisciplinary teams. The One Health concept has gained considerable momentum in recent years but has proved difficult to operationalize in research, in policy development, and in field activities because of resistance from different sectors and health departments to change the way they traditionally operate. A “silo mentality” and “turf protection” have impeded progress in delivering real value through a One Health approach. Two recent books, One Health: The Human-Animal-Environment Interfaces in Emerging Infectious Disease (2013), and One Health: People, Animals, and the Environment (2014), have highlighted these issues and sought to provide practical examples of how these problems have been overcome as well as the added values and insights that can be gained from a One Health approach. …