One Health

The One Health concept recognizes health connections between humans, animals, and their shared environments. It promotes professional cooperation between physicians, veterinarians, and others to address complex problems affecting multiple species and pathogens in changing environments.

Today's collaborations across fields of health and wellness are insufficient to meet societies' challenges in combating disease and maintaining the ecosystem and public health. For example, researchers have previously found that in the realm of infectious diseases, there is a dearth of communication between veterinary and medical professionals, which, with the recent spread of various infectious diseases such as COVID-19, is necessary to track and respond to zoonotic threats. This problem is worsened by the isolation of the training and education within each profession, as well as the lack of zoonotic disease training and lack of environmental health information in human medicine curricula. Therefore, collaboration is essential to equip future physicians in the skills necessary to collaboratively solve complex societal problems including climate change, toxic waste, water pollution, food safety and security, and more. 

While many medical educators may not yet be familiar with the concept, the One Health approach has been endorsed by a number of major medical and public health organizations and is beginning to be implemented in a number of medical schools including Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington Medical School. Currently, outside of a single lecture during the Health and Society Curriculum, there is no specific emphasis on One Health throughout the Plains year curriculum.

The proposed elective aims to use an innovative approach to allow our students to provide improved patient care in the context of One Health and to promote healthy environments benefiting all species.

1. One Health in Communities: The One Health in Communities course is a semester-long elective course offered to medical students and other interdisciplinary graduate and professional students at CSU. It consists of a series of seminars presented by faculty advisors from Colorado State University, Industry experts, and liasons from the City of Fort Collins that will serve to provide the context for a One Health problem that exists in our immediate community today. Through these sessions, students will intimately explore the human, animal, and environmental health implications of the scenario presented and will develop the skills necessary to tackle the challenges at hand. This program will culminate at a “design charrette” facilitated activity in which interdisciplinary student teams present their policy proposals, recommendations, and research needs discovered during this process. The goal is for this group’s work to be used to inform the development of One Health strategies for the City of Fort Collins and surrounding communities. 
2. Veterinary Shadowing Experience: The Veterinary Shadowing Experience is an immersive health experience with the Veterinary Program at CSU’s Animal Teaching Hospital. Students will engage in hands-on clinical activities with veterinary students and their preceptors to explore the similarities and differences between and the interconnectedness of human and animal health. 

i. Service Learning Projects with a One Health Focus: Students at the FCRMC will have the opportunity to engage in service learning projects that are intimately aligned with One Health principles. A few examples include:

1. Fort Collins Street Medicine Clinic in which medical students work alongside veterinary students to provide free care to homeless humans and their pets (The Street Dog Podcast: Building Bridges: Pet and Human Care in Colorado)

2. City of Fort Collins Indoor Air Quality Program in which medical students assess and mitigate the air quality in the homes of community members to improve their respiratory health

i. One Health Trail: The One Health Trail aims to prepare students to be physician advocates, researchers, and real-world problem solvers for One Health challenges that exist today.

ii. Translational Medicine Elective

iii. Interdisciplinary International Elective: This elective aligns with veterinary students and graduate students at CSU’s Satellite campus in Todos Santos.

• CSU’s One Health Institute membership
• Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Engagement across CSU
• Research opportunities (basic science, clinical, and medical education) in the One Health space