{"id":11573,"date":"2022-06-17T16:06:08","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T20:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.porticomagazine.ca\/?p=11573"},"modified":"2022-06-24T17:06:01","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T21:06:01","slug":"one-world-one-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/porticomagazine.ca\/2022\/06\/one-world-one-health\/","title":{"rendered":"ONE WORLD, ONE HEALTH"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

U OF G AT FOREFRONT OF NEW GLOBAL APPROACH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

STORY BY ANDREW VOWLES<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was eight years old, and I wanted to be a monkey.\u201d When that plan fell through, Travis Steffens decided to do the next best thing. He studied primates for his B.Sc., followed by grad studies in anthropology. During his first trip to Madagascar, he wanted to learn more about the impacts of habitat loss on endangered lemurs, those ring-tailed creatures perhaps best known to many viewers through the animated film series named after the African island nation. Steffens quickly realized that focusing on the animals and their environs left out a key third element: people. Today his research at the University of Guelph\u2014and a nonprofit he founded in 2015 called Planet Madagascar\u2014aims to understand the wider health interactions among humans, animals and environment to help conserve all three components.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That trifecta is a classic One Health problem \u2013 although Steffens wasn\u2019t calling it that initially: \u201cI saw myself as a primate conservation ecologist.\u201d No, no, said a colleague, you\u2019re a One Health researcher. It was the colleague who pointed him to a pertinent faculty opening in social sciences at U of G. Now a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Steffens finds himself among numerous experts from across campus who bring a holistic One Health approach to teaching, research and outreach in a variety of fields. As pathobiology professor Dr. Scott Weese, chief of infection control in the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) Health Sciences Centre, says, \u201cOne Health is the intersection between human and animal and environmental health. The approach shows how we are all interrelated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s vital for addressing what OVC dean Dr. Jeff Wichtel calls \u201ccomplex, wicked problems\u201d that defy straightforward solutions involving human or animal medicine alone. Think of the COVID-19 pandemic, believed to have been sparked after a coronavirus long harboured in wild animals leapt to people. Think of antimicrobial resistance that develops after \u201csuper-bugs\u201d eluding livestock antibiotics enter farm fields and streams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think of the potential in an increasingly crowded world\u2014 one marked by urban expansion, increased travel and mobility, habitat destruction, encroachment of farming on natural spaces\u2014for various diseases from Ebola to avian influenza to jump to humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are problems that can only be solved if we bring people from many disciplines together,\u201d says Wichtel.
We still need doctors and veterinarians and ecologists, he allows. But we also need \u201cnatural scientists, social scientists, people from all backgrounds including animal and human health who can think across systems. It\u2019s a systems-thinking approach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tackling those complex problems and equipping grads with pertinent skills are the goals of a campus-wide initiative that now links all seven U of G colleges in One Health research and teaching in what is arguably the most comprehensive such undertaking for a Canadian institution. The University has put together undergraduate and graduate programs\u2014including a first-in-Canada bachelor\u2019s program being launched this year\u2014as well as diverse research projects, a cross-campus institute<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Bachelor of One Health program first ever for Canada<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

comprising some 150 researchers and scholars, and dedicated One Health faculty positions in several colleges. \u201cThe University of Guelph, I believe, is the only institution in Canada that has taken One Health as a strategic direction for the entire campus,\u201d says Wichtel, adding that a similar interdisciplinary impetus drives U of G\u2019s Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses, established in 2006 and now directed by Weese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adds Dr. Charlotte Yates, U of G president and vice-chancellor, \u201cOur One Health Institute and One Health degree are the first of their kind in North America. By leveraging the very best parts of what may appear to be very different fields, we\u2019ve been able to think across boundaries and develop more creative and innovative ideas. Today One Health is successfully developing graduates with the unique skills needed to address complex health issues affecting the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fall, U of G will launch its new Bachelor of One Health (BOH) program intended to train students in topics ranging from transmission of zoonotic disease (infections that jump between animals and humans), antimicrobial resistance and rural community health to agricultural sustainability, food security and species at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is the first four-year undergraduate degree devoted to One Health in Canada,\u201d says Dr. Brian Husband, associate dean, academic, in the College of Biological Science (CBS). Available with or without co-op options or as a minor, the new collaboration involves some 125 faculty members in 23 departments across CBS, OVC, the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) and the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences (CSAHS). Earlier this year, U of G received about 300 applications for nearly 40 spots in the inaugural class; ultimately, about 75 students will be admitted each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That interest partly reflects events of the past two years, Husband says. \u201cThe pandemic and COVID-19 have been like a poster child for the value of One Health. The public is learning that to manage something as global as this takes more than understanding diagnosis and treatment of disease.\u201d Wider societal factors affect the spread and impact of infections, he says. He points to Lyme disease as another example, one that involves researchers in his college within the G. Magnotta Lyme Disease Research Lab. Climate change has enabled ticks to move northward into Canada, where they infect humans as well as wild <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ENVATO ELEMENTS BY SYDNEY<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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animal vectors with the disease-causing bacteria. One Health also touches his own research studies of apple production that involves not just orchard management but also wider ecosystem impacts involving pollinators, native biodiversity and landowners. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Husband says there\u2019s growing demand among employers ranging from medicine and public health to agriculture and ecosystem management for broad-minded grads who \u201cspeak the language of human, animal and environmental health and understand the connections and applications in various areas. We know there\u2019s a need for these kinds of thinkers.\u201d Similar sentiments underlie existing U of G graduate programs based in the veterinary college, where researchers have long focused on ecosystem health and zoonotic diseases. \u201cWe\u2019re already predisposed to look at every problem through a systems approach,\u201d says Wichtel. \u201cThis is in our DNA.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2021, OVC introduced a combined degree program accepting up to five students a year to earn both a doctor of veterinary medicine (DVM) and a master of public health. In each year of the program, students complete One Health modules that stress not just health and disease but also such topics as complexity, systems thinking and equity (the modules are also part of the curriculum for conventional DVM studies).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond graduation, veterinarians are increasingly tapped for leadership in wider health and well-being, says Dr. Jane Parmley, combined DVM\/ MPH graduate program coordinator, whose own career path illustrates the trend. Following DVM studies at the University of Saskatchewan and a PhD from U of G, she spent 12 years working with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative on topics including antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and surveillance for West Nile virus and avian influenza. Today, a large animal veterinarian might equally need to understand not just traditional livestock medicine but also AMR and climate change impacts of agriculture. \u201cWe\u2019re training veterinarians not just to treat disease but also to improve the health and well-being of wild and domestic animals and learn how the health and well-being of animals fits into broader issues of today,\u201d says Parmley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teaching in that program also involves Dr. Katie Clow, a professor in population medicine who studies ticks and Lyme disease as part of the Canadian Lyme Disease Research Network (other U of G members of that national body are Weese and pathobiology professor Dr. Claire Jardine). \u201cA lot of my work is in tick-borne or vector-borne disease,\u201d says Clow. Noting the human-animal-environment intersection inherent in that research, she adds, \u201cIt\u2019s a fascinating, messy ecological problem associated with climate change and land use change and impacts on the ecosystem, wildlife populations, habitat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clow is also the graduate program coordinator for U of G\u2019s Collaborative Specialization in One Health, which she describes as a minor in the discipline available to grad students in other programs from across campus. Launched in 2020, the specialization took in 14 students this year; Clow hopes for a steady-state intake of up to 25 students a year. Currently students are looking at everything from wastewater surveillance for food-borne diseases, to AMR, to lemur conservation, to disease surveillance data governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those students include Grace Nichol, a PhD candidate in population medicine and co-president of the One Health Student Committee on campus. Along with Clow, she studies ticks that carry various pathogens affecting humans animals. \u201cThe problems we face are not confined to one discipline,\u201d says Nichol, who studied biomedical science and mathematical science for her undergrad at U of G. \u201cIf we look at only one pillar, we don\u2019t get a full picture. By taking a One Health approach, we get a better understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time he completed his undergrad in international development (ID) in 2016, David Borish had already done documentary film work ranging from tiger conservation in Malaysia to food security in Kenya. When Inuit in the Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut regions of Labrador shared an opportunity to document the community impacts of a 2013 caribou hunting ban, he made the film project the basis of his doctorate in public health and ID. Factors contributing to caribou population declines are complex and not well understood, and the hunting ban has yet to be lifted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being released later this year, his film, called HERD, looks at the interconnections between caribou and Inuit health and well-being. \u201cIt\u2019s important to recognize that there are health connections that might not be obvious when it comes to conservation issues,\u201d says Borish, who finished his PhD in 2021 and is now investigating polar bears as a post-doc with the Torngat Secretariat and other co-management groups in the eastern Arctic. Recalling his U of G studies, he says, \u201cThe University of Guelph is a great place for One Health because it brings together so many disciplines and experts. There\u2019s the veterinary college and animal health, but also the social sciences are helpful in understanding the social and health dimensions of environmental change. One Health is a natural thing for Guelph to navigate to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, some 150 faculty members belong to U of G\u2019s One Health Institute (OHI), launched in 2019 as a collective of researchers whose work involves some aspect of the One Health approach. All seven colleges are represented in the institute, whose research, teaching and outreach activities are intended to cement U of G\u2019s leading global position in One Health scholarship. Besides serving as an information hub for numerous One Health projects, the group runs a seminar series and an annual symposium (partnered with the Guelph Institute of Development Studies) and provides funding awards for student research projects.
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One project this summer run by Dr. Andreas Heyland, Department of Integrative Biology, will employ a student to model algal blooms in lakes and use U of G-developed DNA barcoding to learn about the diversity of pertinent microbes. Wastewater discharge and farm runoff can promote these blooms, which threaten animal and human health, says Heyland, who has also worked with researchers in OAC\u2019s School of Environmental Sciences: \u201cThe One Health Institute is a vehicle to bring these kinds of expertise together.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

One Health training offers solid career prospects for grads.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


Experiential learning is critical for students who will ultimately become One Health practitioners beyond graduation, says Dr. Cate Dewey, the University\u2019s associate vice-president (academic) and director of the institute. Her One Health credentials include years\u2019 worth of research and outreach with smallholder pig farmers in Kenya that, among other things, improved livelihoods for women, provided schooling for orphaned children, and enlisted farmers, butchers and nutritionists to improve food safety from farms to markets. Among her benchmarks for One Health teaching, research and outreach at U of G: solid career prospects for grads. \u201cA key measure of success will be that anyone who wants One Health graduates to build capacity in government organizations, private industry or non-governmental organizations will know that Guelph is the place to get those people,\u201d says Dewey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s already happening. Among external groups that have approached U of G to discuss One Health is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Dr. Andrea Ellis, DVM \u201989, M.Sc. \u201993, is the senior veterinary science adviser in the CFIA\u2019s Office of the Chief Veterinary Officer who has worked on health issues including food-borne diseases, SARS, H1N1, avian influenza and sheep Q fever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a student, Ellis learned about ecosystem health\u2014considered the forerunner of today\u2019s One Health\u2014from U of G emeritus professor and epidemiologist Dr. David WaltnerToews. This year, she contacted Dewey to talk about joint One Health interests ranging from possible micro-credential programs to co-op placements for students. Referring to U of G strengths including cultural studies, animal health and environmental sciences, she says, \u201cThere\u2019s always been a very strong research and teaching background in these areas that all come together when we think about One Health.\u201d Among many other U of G grads working in One Health is Dr. Dominique Charron, DVM \u201990, PhD \u201901, who serves as vice-president, programs and partnerships, with the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa. In 2021, she was appointed as rapporteur to a new international One Health expert panel providing advice on emerging health crises and on reducing the risk of zoonotic pandemics. On campus, three colleges\u2014OVC, CSAHS and CBS\u2014have recently designated One Health faculty positions. Dr. Heather Murphy, a 2010 PhD graduate in environmental engineering, joined OVC\u2019s Department of Pathobiology in 2020 as a Canada Research Chair (CRC) in One Health. Earlier she worked with UNICEF as a water, sanitation and hygiene specialist abroad, and studied water-borne diseases with the PHAC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U of G colleges have designated One Health faculty positions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

At U of G, Murphy continues to investigate water-borne diseases, including running a project on use of UV light devices for treating private wells to prevent gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases in children. The team includes epidemiologists, pediatricians, microbiologists and statisticians. Describing the One Health connections among them, she says, \u201cThe pathogens are zoonotic, which means they come from a human or animal host, move through the environment into water and reinfect humans or animals.\u201d In another project, she\u2019s looking at impacts of rotational grazing of beef cattle on environmental, animal and human health. Moving from engineering studies into the veterinary college may have been an unlikely career arc, Murphy allows. \u201cOVC picked me for my track record in international development research and looking at broad problems. I like to look at problems in a holistic manner.\u201d Eyeing ecosystem health issues through an Indigenous lens is the goal of Dr. Diana Lewis, who early this year took up a dedicated One Health faculty position in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences. A member of the Sipekne\u2019katik Mi\u2019kmaw First Nation in Nova Scotia, she worked earlier on health impacts of pulp mill emissions and effluent on an Indigenous community in that province. That work revealed gaps in research methodology that provided a less than complete picture of environmental health risks and effects on Indigenous people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now in U of G\u2019s Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, she plans to replicate that community health study with four other Indigenous communities. Lewis also belongs to a collaborative project (A Shared Future) funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research that brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners across Canada to consider how renewable energy can contribute to healing and reconciliation. \u201cOne Health is focused on how to address really complex environmental health issues,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s very much aligned with how the Indigenous peoples and their world views think about human health and the health of all our relations, both animate and inanimate. It is all connected.\u201d A third One Health expert will be installed this year in the College of Biological Science, following a recruitment process this past spring. Based in the Department of Integrative Biology, the candidate will teach in the new BOH undergraduate program and contribute to University-wide graduate and research programs in One Health.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne thing this pandemic has shown us is that how we interact with animals and the environment can impact our health.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As well, U of G plans to recruit three Canada Research Chairs as a \u201ccluster\u201d hire in One Health. Approved this past spring, the chairs will be Tier 2 CRCs based in three colleges: epidemiology and spatial disease modelling in OVC; antimicrobial resistance in CBS; and mathematics and statistics for One Health in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. \u201cThis investment from the CRC program further strengthens U of G\u2019s status as a One Health leader,\u201d says Dr. Malcolm Campbell, vice-president (research). \u201cUniversity of Guelph researchers and scholars are involved in cutting-edge initiatives at the intersection of human, animal and environmental health. This new CRC support will enable us to continue putting research into action and improving life.\u201d From faculty positions to research projects to teaching programs, U of G\u2019s One Health impetus reflects a growing understanding of the importance of this interdisciplinary approach in addressing complex health problems. That understanding is also growing in circles beyond campus, says OVC\u2019s Scott Weese, who brings a One Health perspective to his membership on both the Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance and Ontario\u2019s COVID-19 science advisory table. Speaking of the latter, he says, \u201cI\u2019m there as the One Health guy. My being on the science table is an indication that there\u2019s more understanding of One Health than there might have been 10 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That idea resonates for U of G grad Andrea Ellis at the CFIA, especially as the world emerges from COVID-19. \u201cOne thing this pandemic has shown us is that how we interact with animals and the environment can impact our health,\u201d she says. Referring to animal reservoirs for infectious diseases, she says, \u201cA problem in one part of the world is a problem in all parts of the world. The solution doesn\u2019t lie just in vaccinating the public. We have to look at the root causes, how did we get here, what happened to enable this pathogen to infect us?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Answering such questions now occupies Travis Steffens in his studies of lemurs in Madagascar, home to about 25 million people. Over the past 70 years, about half of the island\u2019s forest has been lost to encroaching agriculture, squeezing lemurs into smaller and smaller habitat. On top of that, the primates are further endangered by various zoonotic diseases that jump from people. Through Planet Madagascar, launched in 2015, he now works with local communities to both improve people\u2019s lives and conserve the animals and their habitat. \u201cTo conserve lemurs, we need to focus on how people live in communities,\u201d says Steffens, who has enlisted experts in various fields from public health and epidemiology to restoration ecology and economics. \u201cThe anthropologist in me recognizes that there\u2019s a massive amount of cultural issues. It\u2019s not a simple problem.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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