Viewpoints on Health:
One Health

CHBS provides the opportunity to explore the One Health approach. It is a collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary strategy that recognizes the interconnection between human health, animal health, and environmental health. It emphasizes that the health of people is closely linked to the health of animals and our shared environment.

Opportunities

Invitations will be sent to faculty, staff and students to attend speaker events.

About the Speaker

Dr. Laura H. Kahn, MD

Dr. Laura H. Kahn is a physician, policy researcher, educator, and author. For 15 years, she was a research scholar in the Program on Science and Global Security_ at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. Her education and training encompass nursing, medicine, public health, and public policy.

In April 2006, she published Confronting Zoonoses, Linking Human and Veterinary Medicine in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases which helped launch the One Health Initiative, a global movement promoting the health of all species by increasing communication and collaboration between human, animal, plant, environmental, and ecosystem health professionals.

Princeton University awarded her course, Hogs, Bats, and Ebola: An Introduction to One Health Policy, with a 250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education. She converted the course into a free, online Coursera course, Bats, Ducks, and Pandemics: An Introduction to One Health Policy that enrolled over 9000 students from around the world from 2020 to 2023. It is now available on YouTube.

Dr. Kahn is the author of several books. The first, "Who's in Charge? Leadership during epidemics, bioterror attacks, and other public health crises", was originally published in 2009 by Praeger Security International. In 2020, a second edition was issued with a new preface discussing leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her second book, "One Health and the Politics of Antimicrobial Resistance", was published in June 2016 by Johns Hopkins University Press. Her third book, "One Health and the Politics of COVID-19", was published in October 2024 by Johns Hopkins University Press. She has written online columns for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and has published in many peer-reviewed journals.

A native of California, Dr. Kahn holds a bachelor's degree in nursing from UC Los Angeles, a doctorate in medicine from the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, a master's degree in public health from Columbia University, and a master's degree in Public Policy from Princeton University. Dr. Kahn is a fellow of the American College of Physicians. In 2007, the New Jersey Chapter of the American College of Physicians awarded her with their highest honor, the Laureate Award. In 2014, the American Association of Public Health Physicians awarded her with a Presidential Award for Meritorious Service, and in 2016, the American Veterinary Epidemiology Society (AVES) awarded her with their highest honor for her work in One Health: the K.F. Meyer-James H. Steele Gold Head Cane Award.

One Health is a collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach - working at the local, regional, national, and global levels to achieve optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnections between human, animal, plant, environmental, and ecosystem health.

The One Health Concept

• Human, animal, plant, environmental & ecosystem health are linked.
• Provides a useful framework for examining complex issues such as pandemics.
• Examining the root causes of pandemics assists in developing effective policies to mitigate and
  prevent them.