Friday Focus: One Health, One Future
March 21, 2019
— by Arleigh Reynolds, director, UAF One Health initiative
It is my pleasure to welcome collaborators from around Alaska to our first One Health, One Future meeting this weekend at Wood Center. It seems appropriate that during this season of hope and renewal, we should meet to build collaborations that will help us address the challenges we face across this great state.
At UAF we have world leaders in many of the disciplines that make up the One Health paradigm and we take a very inclusive and holistic approach to One Health. I strongly believe that all faculty across the UA system as well as our many human and animal health care providers, state and federal agency workers, and community stakeholders have significant roles to play in Alaskan One Health.
Our goal for this workshop is to build interdisciplinary teams that will be highly competitive for funding opportunities that support long-term research, education and outreach programs based on the One Health perspective.
We approach One Health as more than just the absence of disease, but rather as a state of well-being that brings human, animal and environmental health together as an interdependent entity. From the human health perspective, our One Health initiative includes not only physical health but also mental, behavioral, cultural and spiritual health. This approach has always been a part of Indigenous world view and makes UAF’s program unique among other One Health programs, where the focus lies mainly on zoonotic diseases.
As we look to Alaska’s future we see several large challenges that can be best addressed through this integrated perspective. To understand these problems and build solutions that focus on resilience and sustainability, we will need the skills and experiences that everyone brings to this meeting.
I am grateful for the time and effort all participants have made to join us and look forward to the collaborations we will build and take forward from this workshop. To find out more about this meeting, and to learn more about our UAF One Health initiative, check out our website at www.uaf.edu/onehealth.
Friday Focus is a column written by a different member of UAF’s leadership team every Friday. On occasion, a guest writer is asked to contribute a column.