One Health can be defined as the collaborative effort of several disciplines across the community, nation, and world to collectively attain the best health for people, animals, and the environment. The concept stems from the knowledge that everything is connected, so harm that befalls the environment and animals will affect humans and vice versa. The concept covers various topics, including antimicrobial resistance, mental health, biodiversity, climate, and many more. The use of the phrase “One Health” has been around and written in literature, along with the concept of a connection between health and the environment. Despite this acknowledgment, human and animal communities remained relatively separate until 1964. A veterinary epidemiologist, Calvin Schwabe, proposed to join with human health professors to combat a zoonotic disease. In 2007, three associations came together - the Veterinary Medical Association, the Americal Medical Association, and the American Public Health Association. They formed the One Health Initiative Task Force to create 12 recommendations to advance and achieve the One Health Practices in order to combat the broad scope of falling topics within One Health. One issue arises on the topic of antimicrobial resistance as these pathogens aren’t limited to human infectious diseases but to animals and the environment. AMR genes typically reside in the plasmid and can be incorporated into host DNA, however, the host may also shed the AMR bacteria which can release the AMR gene into the environment. This process is how the carbapenemase gene, blaNDM-1, traveled from India to the Arctic. The gene identified in 2007 in a hospitalized patient in India was found 3 years later in the surface waters of India and again in 2013 in the Arctic by a team of researchers sampling thawing permafrost. One Health aids our understanding of how AMR genes can be found worldwide. At the beginning of One Health, 1,461 recognized human diseases were caused by pathogens: 60% of which infect multiple hosts, and 75% of new pathogens in the last 3 decades spread between humans and animals. 17% of cases worldwide are vector-borne, meaning they rely on another organism for transmission. These diseases are often affected by external factors such as climate, animal population, mobility, and climate. For example, the Rift Valley Fever described in Kenya in 1931 uses mosquitoes as its vector which depends on the climate due to their lifecycle. One Health allows for a more in-depth view of the world and health through connections instead of approaching each issue independently from one another.
