Webinar Series: One Health – Reconnecting for Our Future
The Centre for Global Health at UiO is hosting The Lancet One Health Commission webinar series, One Health – Reconnecting for Our Future. This series aims to increase awareness of One Health, share and disseminate the work of the Commission, and foster a multi-directional dialogue. Read more about this webinar series.
Webinar Series
Despite increasing calls to apply a One Health approach to address 21st century issues at the human-animal-ecosystems interface, there has been less focus to date on key aspects of One Health policy and governance to assist in its operationalization. The development of cross-sectoral policies and programs to mitigate the impacts of, for example, future pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, and Neglected Tropical Diseases, is not easy. However, without this perspective, opportunities to address some of the drivers of poor human health outcomes may be missed in the future. In this webinar, Commissioners from the The Lancet One Health Commission will discuss a number of policy and governance lessons from NTD programs, identifying some of the key knowledge gaps for future research and investment in order to better ‘operationalize’ One Health into the future.
Dr. Anna Okello is the Research Program Manager for Livestock Systems at the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, a statutory authority within the Australian government’s foreign aid portfolio. Dr. Okello is a Senior Advisor for One Health at the Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security, and she holds an adjunct teaching position at the University of Edinburgh’s Global Health Academy. She has also held technical advisory and research roles within international non-governmental organizations, in academia, at the World Health Organization, and for the Australian government.
Dr. Bernadette Abela-Ridder works in the Department for the Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) of the World Health Organization (WHO), as team leader on neglected zoonotic diseases and NTDs that have a human-animal interface. She is closely involved in advancing common areas of work with the FAO, the OIE, and other global health actors. Dr. Abela-Ridder previously worked in the WHO Department of Food Safety and Zoonoses, where she led the WHO global burden of leptospirosis study and worked on capacity building and global early warning for zoonotic events.
Prof. Eric Fèvre is Professor of Veterinary Infectious Diseases at the Institute of Infection and Global Health (IGH) at the University of Liverpool and is jointly based at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya. Prof. Fèvre was Chair of the World Health Organization’s Working Group on zoonotic Neglected Tropical Diseases (zNTDs), he is a member of the WHO Expert Committee on Human African Trypanosomiasis, and he was a member of the WHO Initiative to Estimate the Global Burden of Foodborne Disease (FERG). In Kenya, he is a member of the Zoonoses Technical Working Group (ZTWG), the advisory body to the Government of Kenya’s National Zoonotic Disease Unit.
Moderator
Dr. Renzo Guinto is a Commissioner and Next Generation One Health Adviser of The Lancet One Health Commission co-hosted by the University of Oslo (UiO) in Norway, Center for Global Health at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany, and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) in Ghana. A Filipino physician working at the nexus of global health and sustainable development, he is the Chief Planetary Doctor of PH Lab – a “glo-cal think-and-do tank” for advancing the health of both people and the planet. An Obama Foundation Asia-Pacific Leader and Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow, Renzo recently received his Doctor of Public Health degree from Harvard University; for his doctoral dissertation, he investigated the concept of “climate-smart” health systems in coastal municipalities in the Philippines.
COVID-19 has strengthened the case for producing a global cadre of One Health professionals. While the number of students interested in One Health continues to grow, opportunities for training and capacity building in One Health remain limited. In this webinar, panelists representing educational institutions and university networks will present their ongoing educational initiatives, examine challenges and opportunities in One Health capacity building, and propose solutions for the way forward.
George Lueddeke [PhD, MEd, Dipl. AVES (Hon.)] is an education advisor in higher and medical education and chairs the international One Health for One Planet Education (1 HOPE) initiative in association with the One Health Commission (OHC) and the One Health Initiative Autonomous pro bono Team (OHI). Publishing widely on education transformation, innovation and leadership, his current book is entitled Survival: One Health, One Planet, One Future, including “Ten Propositions for Global Sustainability.” His follow-up chapter “Universities in the Early Decades of the Third Millennium: Saving the World from itself?,” in an edited book has also just been released.
Dr. Vipat (Pat) Kuruchittham is the Executive Director of Southeast Asia One Health University Network (SEAOHUN), a regional One Health network of 84 universities in 8 Southeast Asian countries, working to develop a resilient and competent One Health workforce by leveraging education, research, and training. Before leading the network, he worked as a health informatician, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) professional, researcher, educator, and trainer at leading organizations including U.S. CDC, WHO, UNDP, SEAMEO RIHED, and Chulalongkorn University. He holds a Ph.D. in Health Systems Engineering with a minor in public health and MSIE in Decision Science and Operations Research from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Wondwossen A. Gebreyes, DVM, PhD, DACVPM is the Executive Director of the Global One Health initiative (GOHi) and a Professor of Molecular Epidemiology at The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus, Ohio. He has extensive professional expertise in the area of Global One Health, infectious zoonotic diseases, and foodborne as well as water-borne pathogens. Dr. Gebreyes is a primary investigator on a number of current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health awards in Ethiopia as well as other projects. His team conducts research via the Infectious Diseases Molecular Epidemiology Laboratory, and has published widely on globally important zoonotic and foodborne diseases of public health significance with a major emphasis on antimicrobial resistance and Global One Health. Dr. Gebreyes co-founded and currently serves as president of the International Congress on Pathogens at the Human Animal Interface (ICOPHAI).
Dr. Phaedra Henley is the Director of the Center for One Health at UGHE. Here, she oversees the development of its One Health research program, curriculum and community engagement. She is also the Deputy Director of the Master of Science in Global Health Delivery program. Previously, Dr. Henley worked as an Assistant Professor in Global Health at Western University, Canada where she contributed to establishing, implementing, and teaching two new graduate programs in global health. Dr. Henley has completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology, PhD in Pathology, a MSc in Environment and Sustainability, and a BMSc in Medical Sciences.
Moderator
Dr. Renzo Guinto is the Next Generation One Health Adviser of the Lancet One Health Commission co-hosted by the University of Oslo (UiO) in Norway, Center for Global Health at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany, and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) in Ghana. A Filipino physician working at the nexus of global health and sustainable development, he is the Chief Planetary Doctor of PH Lab – a “glo-cal think-and-do tank” for advancing the health of both people and the planet. An Obama Foundation Asia-Pacific Leader and Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow, Renzo recently received his Doctor of Public Health degree from Harvard University; for his doctoral dissertation, he investigated the concept of “climate-smart” health systems in coastal municipalities in the Philippines.
Co-Presenters
The One Health approach continues to generate interest and excitement among students and early career professionals from diverse disciplines, especially now in the era of COVID-19. What are the challenges and opportunities that they face as they develop their young careers in One Health? In this webinar, speakers representing various One Health student and professional networks will reflect on their personal journeys and share their ideas for the future of One Health education, research and practice. Speakers will open the webinar with a quick round on their own experiences in One Health, which will then be followed by an interactive discussion and an open Q&A session for the audience to interact.
Thumbi Mwangi is a Clinical Associate Professor at the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health, Washington State University, and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nairobi Institute of Tropical and Infectious Diseases. He leads a research program on linkages between human and animal health that includes implementation research for rabies elimination in East Africa, livestock programming for improving human nutritional status, and control programs for priority endemic and epidemic zoonotic diseases in Kenya. He serves as the Chair of the Technical Committee on Infectious Disease Modeling advising the Kenyan government on the COVID-19 response.
Ruhil Hayati Hamdan is working as a Senior Lecturer in Paraclinical Department at Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan. Her area of specialization is aquatic animal health. She acquired her Bachelor of Science (Conservation and Biodiversity Management) and Master of Science (Biotechnology in Aquatic Animal Health) in Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. In 2017, she obtained her PhD (Aquatic Animal Health) from Universiti Putra Malaysia. She has over 10 years of experience in projects involving aquatic animal health such as: disease surveillance; pathogen isolation, identification and characterization; multi-drug resistance; phage therapy; and disease control and prevention in a range of aquaculture settings.
Saad Uakkas is a Moroccan final year medical student and global health advocate. He is the Liaison Officer to Student Organizations of the International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA), working with other international health students on One Health issues. He is also a member of the Trainee Advisory Committee of Consortium of Universities for Global Health. He led multiple national and international projects and campaigns such as the IFMSA COVID-19 campaign and Blood Donor Day.
Walekhwa Abel Wilson is currently finishing his Master of Public Health degree at Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Uganda. He is the Immediate Past President (2019-2020) of the International Student One Health Alliance (ISOHA) and has eight years of active practice in One Health with both private and public sectors. Passionate about One Health research and epidemic response, he is currently an active member of Students One Health Club of Mbarara University of Science and Technology.
Helena Chapman is the Associate Program Manager for Health and Air Quality Applications in the Applied Sciences Program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States. In this focus area, her team promotes the use of Earth observation data in One Health applications, related to air quality management and infectious disease prevention and control. She currently is a member of the One Health Initiative Autonomous pro bono team, serves as Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Environmental and Global Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University, and moderator of the One Health Social Sciences Initiative of the One Health Commission.
Moderator
Renzo Guinto is the Next Generation One Health Adviser of the Lancet One Health Commission co-hosted by the University of Oslo (UiO) in Norway, Center for Global Health at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany, and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) in Ghana. A Filipino physician working at the nexus of global health and sustainable development, he is the Chief Planetary Doctor of PH Lab – a “glo-cal think-and-do tank” for advancing the health of both people and the planet. An Obama Foundation Asia-Pacific Leader and Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow, Renzo recently received his Doctor of Public Health degree from Harvard University; for his doctoral dissertation, he investigated the concept of “climate-smart” health systems in coastal municipalities in the Philippines.
Co-Presenters
COVID-19 has forced all of us to come to terms with pandemics and what they represent globally. However, pandemics have been around for a long time and we can reasonably expect that they will continue to happen in the future.
In this webinar, we reflect on the dynamics of pandemics and on the changes that have occurred in the ever-fluctuating balance between humans, pathogens and the world that surrounds us. This raises the question of if we have undervalued the importance of prediction and prevention measures, as well as the relevance of a One Health approach to problems that affect humans, animals and the environment.
With several examples of ongoing and recently finished projects around the world, this webinar will address how prediction and prevention are the necessary but predominantly “missing” pieces of this complex puzzle, as well as integral elements of the One Health understanding that a more effective management of future threats demands.
Carlos Gonçalo das Neves is the Director of Research and Internationalization at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute in Oslo, President of the Wildlife Disease Association and chair of the Wildlife Population Health specialty of the European College of Zoological Medicine. He is a graduate of Veterinary Medicine and holds a PhD in Wildlife Virology, a field in which he has been working for the last 15 years. He works mostly today with topics related to One Health and emerging threats. He holds a joint position at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Tromsø, Norway. Das Neves has served as a national expert in animal welfare and health for the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environment and served as Honorary Consul of Portugal in Norway between 2010 and 2017.
Dr. Peter Daszak is President of EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based organization that conducts research and outreach programs on global health, conservation and international development. Dr. Daszak’s research has been instrumental in identifying and predicting the origins and impact of emerging diseases across the globe. This includes identifying the bat origin of SARS, the drivers of Nipah virus emergence, publishing the first global emerging disease ‘hotspots’ map, discovering SADS coronavirus, designing a strategy to identify the number of unknown viruses in wildlife, launching the Global Virome Project, identifying the first case of a species extinction due to disease, and discovering the disease chytridiomycosis as the cause global amphibian declines. Dr. Daszak is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and Chair of the NASEM’s Forum on Microbial Threats. He is a member of the NRC Advisory Committee to the US Global Change Research Program, the Supervisory Board of the One Health Platform, the One Health Commission Council of Advisors, the CEEZAD External Advisory Board, the Cosmos Club, and the Advisory Council of the Bridge Collaborative. He has served on the IOM Committee on global surveillance for emerging zoonoses, the NRC committee on the future of veterinary research, the International Standing Advisory Board of the Australian Biosecurity CRC; and has advised the Director for Medical Preparedness Policy on the White House National Security Staff on global health issues. Dr. Daszak is a regular advisor to WHO on pathogen prioritization for R&D. Dr. Daszak won the 2000 CSIRO medal for collaborative research on the discovery of amphibian chytridiomycosis, is the EHA institutional lead for USAID-EPT-PREDICT, is on the Editorial Board of Conservation Biology, One Health, One Health Outlook, Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene, and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Ecohealth. He has authored over 300 scientific papers, and his work has been the focus of extensive media coverage.
One Health is critical in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic and with respect to the many other global health challenges that are implicated in the human-animal-environmental interface. One Health offers a transdisciplinary lens for discerning the complex interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health, as well as an integrated approach for harnessing this knowledge to ensure a sustainably healthy future. Join a highly relevant and interactive conversation between the Co-chairs of the Commission, Professor Andrea S. Winkler and Dr. John Amuasi, about One Health and its relevance for pandemics and health security, moderated by Dr. Ramon Lorenzo Luis Rosa Guinto.
Professor Andrea S. Winkler is the Director of the Centre for Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo and the Co-director of the Center for Global at the Department of Neurology, Technical University of Munich. She is also a professor at the Department for Community Medicine and Global Health at the Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo. She is a medical doctor with a specialist degree in neurology, who has practiced in various medical specialties for more than 20 years. Her research interest lies with poverty-related diseases of the infectious as well as non-infectious nature, zoonotic diseases with the ensuing One-Health concept, global mental health/neurology and global digital health. She chairs the Lancet One Health Commission (together with Dr. John Amuasi, KCCR, Ghana) with offices in Norway, Germany and Ghana.
Dr. John Amuasi is trained as a physician at the KNUST School of Medical Sciences in Ghana and has completed post-graduate studies in Health Research at the University of Minnesota SPH. Dr. Amuasi currently leads the Global Health and Infectious Diseases Research Group at the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) and is also a lecturer at the Global Health Department of the SPH, KNUST. Dr. Amuasi’s work involves policy and field epidemiologic studies on diseases of poverty, and he has consulted for several international organizations on interventions to improve health systems, services and outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa.
Moderator
Dr. Ramon Lorenzo Luis Rosa Guinto is a Filipino physician, the Next Generation One Health Advisor for the Lancet One Health Commission and Chief Planetary Doctor of PH Lab – a “glo-cal think-and-do tank” for generating innovative solutions that advance the health of both people and the planet. He recently finished his Doctor of Public Health degree at Harvard University and Visiting Fellowship at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. Renzo previously worked for the World Bank, Health Care Without Harm, World Health Organization, International Organization for Migration, Philippine Department of Health, and University of the Philippines Manila. An Obama Foundation Asia-Pacific Leader and Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow, Renzo has traveled to and lectured in nearly 50 countries; published more than 50 articles in scientific journals, books and popular media; and directed and produced short films that communicate the message of planetary healing to the world.
The COVID-19 coronavirus has catapulted across the ever-evolving interface between humans and wild animals, generating global impact and alarm. Quarantines have been imposed, and borders have been closed. Free movement of people, the pursuit of normal daily routines, economic well-being — and in too many instances, health and even life itself-have been dramatically curtailed by a virus causing a disease that was unknown and unnamed only a few months ago. To reduce the likelihood of future pandemics, we need to rethink our relationship with wild animals and the environment that we all share. Here, we need to change behaviors and practices to mitigate human risk while minimizing ecosystem disruptions, allowing the environment to perform its innate buffering services. The value of keeping ecosystems that bump up against human activity intact cannot be overemphasized. Just as we created the conditions that led to the current pandemic, we can create the conditions to minimize future risk.
Dr. Chris Walzer is a board-certified wildlife veterinarian, Executive Director of Health at the Wildlife Conservation Society and Professor for Conservation Medicine at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria. During the past two decades he has worked in the Gobi region of Mongolia linking wildlife health with the conservation of the Przewalski’s horse and the Asiatic wild ass. Chris has an internationally recognized expertise in working with wildlife, especially megavertebrates, carnivores and primates gained from combined years of leadership and research in Europe, Asia and Africa. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed research publications, numerous book chapters and lectures widely in the field of wildlife health and biodiversity conservation. Dr. Walzer is the recipient of several research and service awards most notably the Distinguished Environmentalist Award from the Mongolian Ministry of Nature and Environment.
Professor Andrea S. Winkler is the Director of the Centre for Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo and the Co-director of the Center for Global at the Department of Neurology, Technical University of Munich. She is also a professor at the Department for Community Medicine and Global Health at the Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo. She is a medical doctor with a specialist degree in neurology, who has practiced in various medical specialties for more than 20 years. Her research interest lies with poverty-related diseases of the infectious as well as non-infectious nature, zoonotic diseases with the ensuing One-Health concept, global mental health/neurology and global digital health. She chairs the Lancet One Health Commission (together with Dr. John Amuasi, KCCR, Ghana) with offices in Norway, Germany and Ghana.
Last modified: April 30, 2025
