What One Health Means to Wildlife Conservation, Human and Veterinary Medicine

What One Health Means to Wildlife Conservation, Human and Veterinary Medicine

Bennington 0:00
Hi, my name is Dr. Julie Benington. I'm a veterinarian and also a PhD in Molecular Medicine and translational science with a concentration in regenerative medicine. I'm also a member of the HVMA, which is the Hawaii Veterinary Medical Association. I'm also a lecturer at UH Manoa in the Department of Human, Food and Animal Sciences.

Kejriwal 0:23
Hey, my name is Samir Kegriwal and I am a second year medical student at the John A Burns School of Medicine. And I have been very involved with One Health in the past few years. So I'm just looking to get involved more.

Vezeau 0:38
Hey all, I'm Neil Vezeau. I'm a supervisory public health veterinarian with the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service. I'm also a technical consultant and project manager for the One Health Commission. And I also serve as a trustee for the International Student One Health Alliance.

Robinson 0:58
Hi, my name is Stacie Robinson. I am a research ecologist for NOAA's Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program. I have my PhD and Wildlife Ecology. And as part of that I study the diseases of wildlife thinking about their ecological context in a One Health framework.

Vezeau 1:18
My understanding is that all of these ideas were consolidated into the term one health plan by Dr. William (Billy) Koresh, who was currently a vice president of EcoHealth Alliance. And that was in the early to mid aughts, or the early to mid 2000s.

Bennington 1:37
One Health to me is a concept that I was introduced to when I was in the military as an Army military veterinarian. And it is a multiple multidisciplinary approach toward public health and zoonotic issues, zoonotic disease issues, that acknowledges the integrated approach among human medicine, animal medicine, as well as the environment.

Kejriwal 2:09
And for me now One Health means connecting the brilliant minds of scientists across so many disciplines because I think there's been so many breakthroughs and technology and different research mechanisms that we can all learn from each other. So I want to connect everybody's minds and create a new solution.

Robinson 2:32
So as a wildlife ecologist studying Hawaiian monk seals, one of the things we think a lot about are what things are threatening the survival and the recovery of this endangered species. And one of the diseases that really pops up and is just like exemplary of these One Health concepts is toxoplasmosis, which is a disease that completes its lifecycle in cats. And then cats can deposit the little infectious particle called an oocyst on the landscape, and then that can make its way all the way through the watersheds to the ocean where marine mammals are getting impacted by it. But toxoplasmosis is also one of the most common lethal foodborne illnesses in humans according to the CDC. It's really one of these diseases that connects human health, wildlife health, domestic species health. A lot of people may think it's kind of weird that the Humane Society and conservation groups are really working together or talking together about cat issues. Certainly, there can be some different feelings about how best to work with tricky issues like cat overpopulation, but a framework like One Health really gives us a way to find some of those connections and find some of that common ground. And we've actually put together a really cool campaign called the Pono Pet Parent campaign, and folks can even go to the HVMA website and find the Pono Pet Parent pledge and learn all sorts of things about how really simple actions like just keeping cats safe and indoors can not only protect things like birds from predation, but also protect from spreading this disease, toxoplasmosis in the environment

Bennington 4:08
Here in Hawaii, some of the zoonotic diseases other than toxoplasmosis include also rat lungworm disease. There's also leptospirosis, and on the mainland, there's rabies, but I guess here in Hawaii, we want to prevent rabies from coming here because Hawaii is a rabies free state.

Robinson 4:28
Yeah, it's really interesting the number of hikes that you go on here and you see you're hiking to a waterfall and you see a sign cautioning you about leptospirosis. There's so many linkages that like maybe as people we’re just so concerned about our own health, but you start thinking about it, and it's like, oh, man, our own health is connected to all these other factors.

Bennington 4:46
And I would also like to incorporate that really One Health is the essence or embodies the Hawaiian cultural practice of Mālama i ka 'āina, which is respect. Respect for all the lands and for all the lands, that includes acknowledges the deep interconnection, the strong connections that the people have with all the lands and including all the animals and and the plants.

Vezeau 5:22
I think it's really interesting how that connects to Indigenous practices elsewhere. It's such a common thing nowadays across some of these types of integrative approaches to health, to really formally adopt these really aged really time tested Indigenous ways of thinking about their connection to their land to the animals on that land. With One Health Month coming to a close, what are some actions that ordinary citizens citizens can say health practitioners can take to advance a One Health approach?

Bennington 5:55
Well, I think that it's not just thinking about the impact or our footprint as people, but what is the impact on our pets? What's the impact on wildlife? What is the impact on our lands and our seas? So if we are overusing and not keeping the environments and wildlife healthy, then we are negatively impacting the future of our own health.

Kejriwal 6:25
Yeah, I mean, I agree with a lot of what Dr. Bennington stated, and I think from a government standpoint, there's so much to be done still. I think we're just scratching the surface of the potential of the One Health paradigm. I'm so excited to learn not from just our voices, but also the voices from around the world and seeing what other governments have done. I've been learning a lot recently about the Fukuoka prefecture in Japan and seeing all the amazing things that they've done. They actually have created One Health forests and One Health hikes and learning about how they created a certificate program for their produce, like a One Health certification.

Robinson 7:12
One of the things that has been most exciting about declaring January as one health month has been just stimulating some of these conversations like we've just been having, and making connections between people that are in all these different fields of ecology and human medicine and veterinary medicine. And I'm really excited.

Vezeau 7:34
Thank you, Dr. Bennington, Sameer and Dr. Robinson for all the thoughts you provided here today.

Robinson 7:40
Thanks, Neil. It was great talking with you.

Kejriwal 7:43
Thank you so much. It was awesome.

Bennington 7:46
It was great meeting all of you and Aloha.