One Health

One Health is an approach calling for "the collaborative efforts of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally, to attain optimal health for people, animals and our environment", as defined by the One Health Initiative Task Force (OHITF). It developed in response to evidence of the spreading of zoonotic diseases between species and increasing awareness of "the interdependence of human and animal health and ecological change". In this viewpoint, public health is no longer seen in purely human terms. Due to a shared environment and highly conserved physiology, animals and humans not only suffer from the same zoonotic diseases, but can also be treated by either structurally related or identical drugs. For this reason, special care must be taken to avoid unnecessary or over-treatment of zoonotic diseases, particularly in the context of drug resistance in infectious microbes. A number of organizations throughout the world support the objectives of "One Health" including the One Health Commission (OHC), One Health Initiative, One Health Platform, The FAO-OIE-WHO collaboration, CDC One Health Office and others. Calvin Schwabe, a veterinarian trained in public health, coined the term "One Medicine" in a veterinary medical textbook in 1964, to reflect the similarities between animal and human medicine and stress the importance of collaboration between veterinarians and physicians to help solve global health problems. He established a department at University of California, Davis to jointly address issues in the animal and human health sciences. In 2004, The Wildlife Conservation Society held a conference at Rockefeller University in New York called "One World, One Health". Out of that conference the twelve Manhattan Principles were created to describe a unified approach to the prevention of epidemic diseases. These principles emphasized links between humans, animals, and the environment; their importance in understanding disease dynamics; and the need for interdisciplinary approaches to prevention, education, investment, and policy development.