The World Health Organization describes One Health as “an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems.” One Health is at the heart of the mission of the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM), and in a panel hosted by the CVM Research Office, experts from diverse disciplines agreed that this approach is more critical than ever in the face of the existential challenges of climate change.

Moderated by Kent Reed, professor and chair of the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences (VBS), the event featured:

• Matthew Aliota, associate professor in VBS
• Alexandra Zachwieja, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Minnesota Duluth Medical School
• Kyle X. Hill, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. 

Hill described how his work is a natural extension of his Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota heritage: 

“What's unique about Indigenous communities is that there's an innate One Health or planetary health approach to our Indigenous communities, especially as we practice our traditional lifeways and cultural lifeways,” he says.  In his research, Hill examines how these traditional life ways correspond to climate adaptation and mitigation, and how they can best be leveraged in those spaces.

As a biological anthropologist, Zachwieja also examines human interaction with the environment. She has studied how humans migrated around the globe and interacted with other species through periods of major climate change, such as the Last Glacial Maximum (the most recent ice age, about 25,000 years ago)—”the last period of intensive climate change in our deep history, until what we’re experiencing now,” she described. Her work has taken on a new urgency and a focus on the future instead of the past: “I love my work on the past, but there’s something in me that needs to think about what’s happening right in front of our very eyes.”

Zachwieja described one incident that inspired this shift: on a research trip to Laos in 2016, her team got severely ill with what they eventually learned was a mosquito-born virus called Chikungunya. She described that this experience showed her firsthand how “globally we are not prepared to handle disease vectors popping up in places they aren’t expected to be.” 

This story describes precisely the type of scenario that Aliota spends his days thinking about as a virologist. Aliota studies arthropod-borne viruses, looking at how viruses evolve within hosts and during transmission. 

“The most important aspect of transmission for these viruses is the ecology of the mosquito or tick vector—where they are found, the viruses follow,” he says.

Because of climate conditions, tropical mosquito species, for example, have been able to move into new parts of the globe, causing “unprecedented local outbreaks” of diseases such as dengue fever. Aliota’s research is designed to address the fact that, as he described, “we are moving into a time period where we are going to be experiencing a warmer and sicker world,” and the need to understand and predict the dynamics of disease transmission is crucial.

Another crucial point where the panel converged was the need for improved communication between scientists and the public. Hill noted that deep local community and Indigenous knowledge is underappreciated: “We hear things like, ‘these chokecherry stands are just changing. They're not there anymore. And this is like a traditional food for us. The [wild] plums are ripening earlier.’ And so I think that as a first source, an important indicator for changes that are happening within that ecosystem.”

Zachwieja expressed a similar sentiment, pointing out how scientists can use this local knowledge as a point of connection: “Whether or not folks [believe in or want to talk about] big ‘capital CC’ climate change, people know that it's been a lot warmer recently. People know how their gardens are doing. People know how the animals that they used to see and and watch bird watching are not there anymore. And I think that's a really missed connection that we researchers could both for data, but also reach back out to build connection.”

In addition to the opportunities presented through community collaboration and mutual education, the panel discussed the urgent need to move past the structural barriers that prevent inter- and trans-disciplinary science, such as budgets and funding structures.

“There’s an orientation toward justice that we need to be a party to in our scientific community and as concerned citizens moving forward,” Hill says. “Climate change is going to force us down in that direction. because I don't think there's going to be a choice. … We're not too far away from a time where there's going to be one solution, and it's breaking down these barriers to figuring out the science.”

The panel was part of CVM’s Research, Innovation, Discovery, and Education (RIDE) Seminar Series, which offers a platform for cutting-edge exploration and discussion in veterinary biomedical research. 

Watch the full seminar here.