News Archive Item
One Health course -- interdisciplinary distance learning
Description:
New One Health Course Launched – University of California Global Health Institute (USA)
The One Health Center of expertise was launched as part of the University of California Global Health Institute in November 2009 (http://www.ucghi.universityofcalifornia.edu/). In April, One Health Center faculty at UC Davis and UC Riverside launched a two-credit teleconference course on One Health that represented the unique transdisciplinary focus of the One Health approach to global health.
The course introduced students to the core concepts involved in One Health, particularly the promotion of an integrated transdisciplinary approach to global health problems. Students learned how the health of humans, animals and the ecosystems they share are closely linked. Each session focused on real case problems ranging from water scarcity, waterborne disease and watershed management in Tanzania and Kenya, tsetse fly control in Ethiopia, and zoonotic disease transmission in California. In addition, students were exposed to techniques of cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis of global health interventions.
The graduate student and faculty participants — from UC Davis, UC Riverside, and the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento — encompassed disciplines that included international and community nutrition, international agricultural development, veterinary medicine, entomology, environmental sciences, sociology, economics, microbiology, parasitology, molecular biology, engineering, medicine, environmental public health, and epidemiology.
Laurie Harris, DVM, a UC Davis graduate student in epidemiology and Bridge Trainee in the REACH IGERT, led a One Health case discussion based on her graduate work on the health of the mountain gorillas and neighboring human communities in Rwanda. Afterwards Laurie commented, “Leading a One Health discussion was a fun way to share ideas and, thanks to the help of my colleagues, to think more deeply about the interdisciplinary nature and effectiveness of my own research.”
