Handbook

One Health is an ambitious concept seeking to enhance interdisciplinary collaborations across all aspects of health care. It embraces traditionally separate fields including human medical health disciplines, veterinary medicine, public health and health administration, and the interactions of human and animal populations with the environment. Although articulated as a 21st Century concept, the connection between human health and the environment has been understood since ancient times. The subsidiary concept of ecosystem health, which notes that healthy ecosystems are needed to support healthy communities, developed during the 20th Century. The modern synthesis is the recognition that complex health problems such as disease pandemics cannot be prevented or controlled by specialists in one discipline alone, but require contributions from multiple specialists working in collaborative teams.