One Health Lecture Series: Governance and Operationalization Challenges

The concept of One Health has been around for centuries, but the official term was adopted in 2004. Despite its devastation for human health, the COVID-19 pandemic had the advantage of raising awareness regarding the One Health approach globally. A “One Health High Level Expert Panel” (OHHLEP), launched in June 2021, proposed a definition for the One Health approach on Dec 1, 2021, at the same time as a special World Health Assembly session was taking place to initiate discussions about a potential pandemic treaty. In April 2022, the World Health Organization, the World Organization for Animal Health, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN Environment Programme signed a memorandum of understanding to form a quadripartite group to tackle One Health challenges through a legal agreement. However, despite all this international support the hardest challenge remains the operationalization and demonstration of the added-value of the approach. In this seminar, I will present a few elements of the history and global governance of One Health, but also give an example of its operationalization in a study we conducted in Burkina Faso, which also came with many governance and political challenges.

The keynote address with Dr. Helene Carabin, School of Public Health, University of Montreal, and panellists Dr. David McCarthy, Dept of Civil Engineering, Monash University, Brisbane Australia, and Dr. Marc Habash, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. in the OVC Lifelong Learning Centre, room 1714.

Student poster sessions will run beforehand from 5 to 7 p.m. in the OVC Cafeteria.

Everyone is welcome. Light refreshments will be provided.