 with busy healthcare professionals? It is surely here, at the coalface, that One Health meets its biggest challenge.
That is not to say that practitioners are not engaged. Across the UK, vets are focused on tackling antibiotic resistance and minimising antibiotic use. Rightly so. Of all the One Health issues, antibiotic resistance has become the new driving force for cross-professional collaboration. Where as avian influenza was the key prompt for the WHO and FAO to work together in 2004, it is now antibiotic resistance that is bringing people together, including environmental leaders.
But there are other examples, too, of how vets are practising One Health. A group of vet practices in Scotland has teamed up with NHS Fife, for example, to educate clients about the dangers of passive smoking to their pets and encourage them to provide smoke-free homes. Others are have set up schemes to reduce obesity in clients and their pets.
So what does the progress report conclude for One Health? Professor Gibbs is satisfied that the concept has taken root – One Health has certainly become entrenched in the psyche of the veterinary profession. But what are the next steps?
There is a need for more practical support to help practitioners embrace One Health – perhaps a toolkit to help vets put One Health into practice?
It would be helpful, too, to identify One Health champions across the key disciplines. We need to identify the next Lord Soulsby, a vet whose contribution to interdisciplinary collaboration was marked by his presidency of the Royal Society of Medicine as well as the RCVS. The NHS has used tsars to champion good practice in complex areas of activity, perhaps that could work to good effect here?
And perhaps collaboration could be encouraged though vet-medic regional meetings to foster common thinking and common approaches?
Looking ahead, there will be a need to push for indicators and data to measure One Health progress in order to drive activity in priority areas. And there will be a clear need to influence government policy in order to further drive the One Health agenda.
But, probably a key requirement is to create a positive vision of One Health.
What would it feel like to be part of a One Health world? How would patients experience it? What would other spheres of life and work look like? Could it bring a better approach to dealing with work-life balance, the use of green space? Could it bring a ban on non-stun slaughter? Could it provide a means of alleviating poverty in the world's poorest societies?
Setting out that vision more tangibly, perhaps in the form of a short animation, would help coalesce understanding, not only among professionals but with the public.
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