“One Health,” the transdisciplinary attempt to address the nexus of human, animal, and ecosystem health that first emerged nearly two decades ago, has gained renewed attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept got an update at the World Health Summit that began Sunday in Berlin.
A One Health High Level Expert Panel, or OHHLEP, first convened in May of this year, used the summit to unveil its definition of the concept amid a broader focus on how to actually jumpstart One Health approaches that integrate the entire global community.
Conceptualized as an “integrated, unifying approach” across the tightly interlinked areas of human, animal, and ecosystem health, OHHLEP’s definition conceives a mobilization “at all levels of society to work together to tackle threats to health and ecosystems, while addressing our collective needs for healthy foods, energy and air, taking action on climate change and promoting sustainable development.”