One Health: A Ten-Thousand-Year-Old View into the Future

Are you interested in understanding how global climate change will alter human society, animal health, and the environment? Are you curious about how these three things are interconnected?

This course focuses on what is happening right now in the Arctic, where climate change is accelerating twice as fast as the rest of the world. Understanding how Arctic ecosystems are adapting and collapsing can give us insight into future changes across the globe. While this course is focused on the Arctic, the principles and concepts in this course can be applied anywhere in the world.

Finding deep solutions to new challenges caused by climate change can’t be accomplished using only traditional fields of science, such as medicine or biology.

Addressing these issues effectively requires a novel approach, one that integrates knowledge across disciplines and cultures and recognizes the interdependence of human, animal, and environmental health. This concept, always central to the Indigenous worldview, has recently been recognized in Western science as One Health.

One Health was originally developed as a means of understanding how zoonotic diseases, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic, arise.

• Between 65% and 70% of emerging diseases in humans are of zoonotic origin. The way we impact our environment and how this influences human-animal interactions play a significant role in how these diseases develop and spread.
• Health is more than the absence of disease and can be defined as a state of well-being for individuals and their communities. Under this definition, well-being encompasses physical, mental, behavioral, cultural, and spiritual health.
• Applying this holistic approach to the One Health paradigm allows us to bring in expertise across natural and social sciences and connect Western science with traditional Indigenous ways of knowing.
• Such a broad and deep integration of knowledge and experience provides opportunities for understanding large issues like food safety, security, and sovereignty at their roots, and for engaging stakeholders to build effective solutions.

Students who complete this course will:

• Have a solid understanding of the One Health concept
• Be able to identify how One Health can provide a lens through which to view a variety of challenging situations in human, animal, and environmental health
• Explain how the One Health approach can lead to sustainable solutions to critical issues facing communities in the Circumpolar North and beyond

Students will also:

• Explain the One Health paradigm with a focus on the Circumpolar North and global applications
• Describe the ten thousand-year history of One Health
• Explore interrelationships between human, animal, and environmental health
• Provide examples of challenges best addressed through the One Health paradigm
• Explain why previous approaches to problem-solving have failed
• Differentiate between reductionist and constructionist approaches to problem solving and explain why One Health utilizes the constructionist approach
• Describe how Traditional ways of knowing and Western science can be used together to understand and manage One Health issues

Module One: What is One Health?

• Welcome to the Course

• One Health Concepts

• Indigenous Worldview

• The Zen Venn Approach

Module 2: Animal Health

• Animal Health Introduction

• Why Animal Health Matters

• Relationships and Resiliency

Module 3: Human Health

• Human Health Introduction

• Human Health - More than just the Absence of Disease

Module 4: Environmental Health- Our role in the Ecosystem

• Environmental Health

• One Health and Climate Change

• Biodiversity

• Biocontaminants and Contaminant Monitoring

Module 5: Integrating One Health through a Constructionist Approach

• Operationalizing One Health

• Approaches to One Health

• Reductionism vs Constructivism

• Engaging Stakeholders