January is One Health Awareness month, a good time to take stock of how this important story area has grown in public awareness and of how much more needs to be done.
What is One Health?
An approach that emphasizes the interconnectedness of human, animal and environmental health, and which aims to address health challenges through collaboration in these areas. “It is a mindset of collaboration among key areas in biology, ecology, human, animal and plant health research, with clear benefits because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” said a commentator at the Internews-led Storytelling session at the 8th World One Health Congress (WOHC), held in Cape Town in September 2024.
More Science
A study in PubMed, published in late 2024 shows there has been a substantial increase in scientific output on the subject of One Health over recent years. A comprehensive bibliometric analysis, which looks at how often articles are used or cited, shows One Health is gaining significant attention as a framework for addressing global health challenges. There is a shift in focus from traditional areas such as microbiology and infectious diseases to broader public health issues, including healthcare management, policy development, and food security, with attention to plant health, crop production, and the use of pesticides.
More Networking
2024 has been an eventful year for the entire One Health community. Dr. Deborah Thomson is the founder of One Health Lessons, an educational charity which inspires children and adults around the world to value the connection between public health and the health of the environment, animals, and plants. In the One Health Lessons annual newsletter, she says 2025 looks bright for One Health education, community empowerment, and public health! Dr. Thomson was one of the speakers at the Internews-led panel at the 8th WOHC in September. There she said that more networking and better one health communication are critically important because the end goal, which is community and policy maker buy-in and engagement, is so important to secure a healthier future. The outcomes of the WOHC contributed to the high-level discussions of the 79th UN Session in New York.
The past 18 months have seen a number of high-level engagements and agenda-setting discussions on the One Health front. Global health organizations, like the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pandemic Action Network (PAN) and others advanced the One Health approach – at forums which were typically “human health only” discussions in the past, e.g. at the two most recent UN climate convenings, COP28 in Dubai and COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Health was a prominent subject – and the climate-health nexus looks set to become a regular feature on the COP agenda. This nexus is one of the linkages of the multi-disciplinary One Health lens: the idea that climate change and the extreme weather events, drought and heat that accompany it have direct and indirect impacts on human health.
Among the WHO engagements were workshops on operationalizing the One Health approach in Kosovo and in Bangladesh, significant One Health policy discussions at the 77th World Health Assembly in Geneva in May 2024, a One Health seminar for the Europe region in June, a G20 One Health high-level seminar, a series of One Health webinars, and more. The One Health approach is also included in the draft WHO Pandemic Agreement. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted that need for a global framework – and significant funding – for disease surveillance and control. In December, the WHO delivered oral statements to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the intersection of climate change and global health, and the urgent need for global action.
A highlight for the One Health community was the 8th WOHC in Cape Town, which brought together more than 1,400 participants from 87 countries, featuring 400 speakers across 70 sessions, and showcasing 600 scientific posters. Internews led a session at the WOHC titled “From Explainers to Solutions Journalism: How can the media shape impactful public conversations on One Health?” There were few media representatives at the Congress, something which many who attended said they hope would change, because “One Health is everywhere in our lives”, as one of the panellists Chacha Gardy, said. Chacha is a scientist and a journalist for The Standard in Kenya.
More Stories on One Health
“This particular topic [communicating One Health] is important, because I think many attending the Congress come from the world of academia. You’re scientists. You are, maybe, lawmakers, maybe policy makers, but the people that we communicate to, or the people that we do our stories for, as journalists, are the average person, lay people on the streets,” Chacha said.
“So, my job is to make sure that when I go back home, I’m able to tell this story to my grandmother, my uncles, my friends, lay people in a manner that when they see the weather forecast, they can almost predict how that is going to help them make proper decisions for their lives.” – Chacha Gardy
Another panelist, Prof. Jakob Zakob Zinsstag, who is with the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, says when he talks to farmers, “for them, it is just normal that their health, the health of their animals and the health of the plants go together.” He has worked with indigenous communities in Guatemala, Chad, Ethiopia, and he says this holistic approach is already present because of practical realities. He and all other panelists (Dr. Deborah Thomson, Dr. Salome Bukachi, a medical anthropologist at the University of Nairobi, Dr. Hongying Li, EcoHealth Alliance, and Emmanuel Dabo, of the African Science Communication Agency (ACSA) in Ivory Coast, agree that it is equally critical that the One Health story must be told in a way that holds policy makers accountable. Dr Bukachi says policy advocacy is an important reason why scientists and journalists must communicate better and more about One Health. She is working on a project that covers 11 countries in East and Southern Africa, championing One Health integration across the countries, because nature and disease see no borders.
“Sometimes I call myself a cultural broker, because my work is at the interface of communities and policy makers, researchers, academics,” says Dr Bukachi. “When there is mutual understanding and equilibrium in how communities engage with their animals, with their environment and with each other, we have a chance at success,” – and policymakers must support with appropriate laws and regulations.
The panel emphasised that journalists can be important allies of One Health – and critics when policymakers go off course.
“I think stories are still the best way of communicating truth.” – Prof Jakob Zinsstag
Prof Zinsstag is putting together a fifteen-chapter book highlighting stories from 30 years in One Health research and civic science. He agrees that scientists are captured in the jargon, and so he and his team have asked a radio journalist to make the stories real and relatable.
Dr. Li said one way to make the story real is to acknowledge that all of us – journalists, policymakers, ordinary people – are a part of putting the world out of balance, for instance, because we may like fashion and don’t question the environmental harms of clothes production. “The fact that COVID likely originated in a wet market made us stigmatize meat markets,” she said, “but the reality is we all need and use food markets, so there has to be a pragmatic and wholesome way to live in this interconnected world. Audiences relate and become better allies when they don’t always just hear that they were in the wrong,” she suggested.
Emmanual Dabo reminded us of the term “solutions” in the panel description. “Sometimes, the solution is already there – indigenous multidisciplinary solutions for multi-faceted problems – and we journalists and scientists must involve this knowledge and communicate about it. In doing so, we would have more solutions to draw from and more people would feel a part of what we write about,” says Emmanuel.
See Voices of Collaboration: 5 Expert Insights on Bridging Science and Storytelling for One Health for more tips on how to tell the One Health Story.
What One Health Journalists are Saying
Internews Health Journalism Network (HJN) and Earth Journalism Network (EJN) continue to support One Health initiatives, which can include a look at the nexus between climate and health, the impact of heat on our health and a planetary health focus.
Krixia Subingsubing, a journalist with the Philippine Daily Enquirer attended an EJN fellowship on extreme heat and its impacts in early January 2025. The fellowship, which raises awareness of heat-health resilience is supported by the Heat Resilience and Performance Centre at the National University of Singapore.
“It is important to tell stories about heat, because in the Philippines before, our only focus was typhoons and floods, because those are the more immediate impacts to us. We don’t really think of heat as an immediate danger because we think that because we’re a tropical country, we should be used to heat as a normal condition. But it shouldn’t be treated that way.” Krixia feels the fellowship has shown her how to communicate effectively about the topic.
“As journalists, we should be the ones to communicate that important detail to the public so that they can make better decisions and for our policymakers to also institute better policies that helps people better deal with extreme heat.” – Krixia Subingsubing, EJN Fellow
Chemtai Kirui is a science journalist with Kass FM in Kenya, and a fellow of our Climate-Health journalism program, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust:
“One Health has become a critical focus in our newsroom, with dedicated airtime on TV, radio, and digital platforms. For instance, a program on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) revealed how even the food we eat, like chicken, contributes to AMR. This sparked interest from our managing editor, leading to follow-up discussions with a vet and soil health expert. The interconnectedness of the ecosystem, animal, plant, and human health is increasingly evident, and imbalances in one area ripple across all others.” – Chemtai Kirui, HJN Fellow
The HJN and Internews are both looking forward to doing more in the One Health space and continuing to provide leadership on communications in this evolving thematic area. Stay tuned for more from us in 2025!
Written by Ida Jooste