One Health: A Ten Thousand Year-Old View into the Future
The University of ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ Fairbanks partnered with edX to create ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñX and offer
select classes for free or for a Professional Certificate. One Health: A Ten Thousand
Year-Old View into the Future has been chosen as one of these initial Massive Open
Online Courses (MOOC). Enrollment in ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ is not necessary.
ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ This Course
The Arctic is experiencing environmental, social, and economic changes at an historically
unprecedented rapid rate. This poses great challenges and simultaneously great opportunities
to operationalize paradigm shifts supporting adaptation and resilience to these changes
and which can then serve as a management model for similar changes that are occurring
more gradually on a global scale. Addressing these issues effectively requires a novel
approach, integrating knowledge across disciplines and cultures and recognizing the
interdependence of human, animal, and environmental health. This concept, always central
to the Indigenous worldview, has recently been recognized in Western science as One
Health.
One Health was originally developed as a means of understanding how zoonotic diseases,
such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic, arise.
-Between 65% and 70% of emerging diseases in humans are of zoonotic origin. The way
we impact our environment and how this influences human-animal interactions play a
significant role in how these diseases develop and spread.
-Health is more than the absence of disease and can be defined as a state of well-being
for individuals and their communities. Under this definition, well-being encompasses
physical, mental, behavioral, cultural, and spiritual health.
-Applying this holistic approach to the One Health paradigm allows us to bring in
expertise across natural and social sciences and connect Western science with traditional
Indigenous ways of knowing.
-Such a broad and deep integration of knowledge and experience provides opportunities
for understanding large issues like food safety, security, and sovereignty at their
roots, and for engaging stakeholders to build effective solutions.
We have three courses available, check them all out!