The One Health

While health, food, water, energy, and environment are all wider topics with sector-specific and specialist concerns, the collaboration across sectors and disciplines contributes to an overall approach: One Health which embodies health collaboration at the human-animal-ecosystem intersection. Thus, the One Health approach is crucial to efficiently preventing zoonotic disease emergence, as it helps address the full spectrum of disease control – from disease prevention to detection, preparedness, response, and management – and to improve and promote health and sustainability.

PREZODE strategy embodies the One Health approach

The PREZODE initiative fulfills this holistic perspective. It aims to develop a research framework to understand the macro processes and drivers leading to zoonosis emergence in the context of global changes. This will be conducted by studying the ecology and evolutionary history of pathogens and hosts, as well as the socio-environmental mechanisms that bring humans and animals together. Doing so will enable the development of strategies that intend to minimize human populations' exposure to zoonotic pathogens and, ultimately, foster the prevention of zoonotic disease

Over the past several decades, different actors and scientific fields have developed a holistic and transdisciplinary approach to health in response to zoonotic diseases. UN agencies have adopted the One Health approach. Since 2021, the Quadripartite alliance (involving the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Environmental Program, and the World Organization for Animal Health) mainstream One Health in order to be better prepared to prevent, predict, detect, and respond to global health threats and promote sustainable development. The Quadripartite established a One Health High-Level Expert Panel (OHHLEP), to produce policy recommendations on the prevention of and response to future health crises and to inform citizens about the issues at stake. OHHLEP provided the internationally endorsed definition:

"One Health is an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. It recognizes the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and the wider environment (including ecosystems) are closely linked and interdependent. The approach mobilizes multiple sectors, disciplines, and communities at varying levels of society to work together to foster well-being and tackle threats to health and ecosystems while addressing the collective need for clean water, energy and air, safe and nutritious food, taking action on climate change, and contributing to sustainable development."

PREZODE works in close collaboration with Quadripartite and experts of the OHHLEP.