The One Health Trail: Physician Leaders as Advocates for Human, Animal, and Environmental Health

Abstract

The One Health Trail: Physician Leaders as Advocates for Human, Animal, and Environmental Health is a novel, nine-month longitudinal curriculum designed for third- and fourth-year medical students to explore the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health through the One Health framework. This course integrates didactic, experiential, and independent learning activities, emphasizing real-world application through community-based engagement. Students interact with a diverse range of stakeholders. This includes but is not limited to: academic experts, researchers, policymakers, industry professionals, and community members. Areas of focus include the food supply chain, mining, wildlife and livestock management, water quality, human-animal bonds, ecosystem and planetary health, and healthcare sustainability. These interdisciplinary experiences cultivate students' abilities to critically analyze complex health challenges and advocate for comprehensive, systems-level solutions. This manuscript outlines the course structure, details its educational components, and presents preliminary data from student course evaluations. Finally, the authors propose models for adapting this curriculum to other undergraduate medical education programs and to graduate-level training programs seeking to incorporate One Health principles into interdisciplinary learning.

Keywords: One Health; advocacy; curriculum; leaders; medical students.