Field Courses
One Health in Action
With global populations increasing rapidly, one of the most important concerns facing human-kind is ensuring health – including access to adequate, sustainable and safe food resources and water, human and animal disease prevention, resilient ecosystems and culturally appropriate health care.
Sri Lanka intensive field course
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2 - 22 July 2017
With global populations increasing rapidly, one of the most important concerns facing human-kind is ensuring health – including access to adequate, sustainable and safe food resources and water, human and animal disease prevention, resilient ecosystems and culturally appropriate health care. The health of our people, our animals, and our planet are highly linked and all are at risk given current trajectories.
This three-week action-oriented field course is designed for a collegial, inquisitive, multi-disciplinary group of students in human health sciences, veterinary medicine, agriculture, nutrition, and social and environmental sciences.* University of California (UC) applicants can be enrolled at any of the 10 campuses. Students must be committed to learning and working together to apply the One Health approach to important human, animal and environmental health problems. Eligible UC students will include professional degree students in medicine and veterinary medicine as well as graduate students in nursing, agriculture, nutrition, public health, social and environmental sciences.
Deadline for applications: January 10, 2017
Selection of students: February 21, 2017
Cost: $3,500 (plus airfare)
Partner: University of Peradeniya, Kandy, Sri Lanka
*Academic credit possible
Rx One Health Tanzania and Rwanda
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4 June – 30 June 2017
View and download the Rx One Health 2017 flyer
Course Overview – The goal of Rx One Health 2017 is to provide a “prescription” or Rx for early career health professionals to prepare them for immediate engagement in global health careers that will demand effective problem solving skills, cross-disciplinary engagements, and solid foundations in field and laboratory activities. The intensive course is aimed at a level appropriate for recent graduates or students in medical and veterinary schools around the world, as well as other early career health, agriculture, and conservation professionals. The course is based on the principles and practices of One Health. Participants will be immersed in settings that will illustrate that the health of people, animals and the environment are inextricably linked. Rx One Health 2017 will provide participants with direct access to mentors, tools, and knowledge to allow them to apply a One Health approach to their lives’ work. Course activities will all center on exposing participants to real-world One Health situations, challenging them to consider the many inter-related issues that are typical of complex problems, and to see firsthand, and even develop themselves, One Health strategies for overcoming these challenges. All Rx One Health participants will greatly improve their understanding and grasp of One Health competencies: cross-disciplinarity; communications; professional integrity, ethics and diplomacy; vision integration and advocacy for change; teamwork; and systems thinking. In addition, exposure to concepts and skills necessary for designing and participating in emerging infectious disease and toxin control programs will be provided.
Eligibility – Enrollment will be open to early career health, agriculture, and conservation professionals, with enrollment priority given to veterinary and medical students from the University of California and University of Rwanda. In 2017, a maximum of 22 students will be accepted for the June program.
Background – Led by the UC Davis One Health Institute, University of Rwanda, and Sokoine University of Agriculture, Rx One Health is being taught for the first time in June 2017. It’s curriculum has been built on the tremendous legacy of a course called Envirovet Summer Institute that was co-led by UC Davis and offered multiple times throughout the 1990s and 2000s, and which trained more than 400 veterinarians and veterinary students from around the world in ecosystem health (a precursor to One Health). Like Envirovet, Rx One Health will be an immersion-style, hands-on, intensive training course delivered over a 4-week period, with all coursework occurring in Tanzania and Rwanda in 2017.
Curriculum – Recurrent themes throughout Rx One Health will be One Health, planetary health, human-wildlife-environment interfaces, zoonotic disease and mitigation strategies, animal agriculture strategies, wildlife conservation, food safety and sustainability, and community engagement. Training will be in the forms of seminars in classrooms, small-group discussions in laboratories with scientists and around campfires with pastoralists and village members, and hands-on field exercises at farms, in parks, and on lakes and rivers. Students will spend time in laboratories observing experiments and studies, and will make presentations to stakeholders. Most importantly, the opportunities for structured group-sharing sessions, as well as unstructured brainstorming for effective problem solving, will be just as enriching, as will one-on-one conversations with faculty mentors.
In Tanzania, students will gain first-hand knowledge and experience with a variety of One Health challenges and solutions, including topics such as: animal-based food systems and zoonotic disease challenges (e.g. bovine tuberculosis); emerging infectious disease identification and control; wildlife capture; biosafety and security; cultural and ecological tourism; wildlife conservation and park management; water quality and delivery systems; health and food challenges facing underserved communities; and environmental contaminants. After two weeks in Tanzania gaining foundational material in One Health, Rx One Health students will then travel to Rwanda, where they will first gain insight into various One Health-oriented programs and projects implemented by the government and by international organizations. They will then more deeply engage in an immersive exercise to envision a One Health Cooperative for a community outside Volcanoes National Park that would address, balance, and solve very real challenges facing the community with regard to safe and efficient livestock production and welfare (dairy cows); nutrition (milk quality, production, and delivery), community health (maternal/child health care interventions) and wildlife conservation (mitigating wildlife-human contact outside the park) amidst changing climate and socioeconomic environments. Together with mentors and stakeholders, the students will lay the groundwork for a One Health Cooperative called Kinigi Farms, and will create a plan and materials that can be used by partners in Rwanda to garner support for this and similar initiatives that strive to balance conservation, health, and livelihoods.
Faculty – Rx One Health will be led by several senior faculty of the One Health Institute at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine (UCD SVM), including: Jonna Mazet, DVM, PhD (Executive Director, OHI), Kirsten Gilardi, DVM, DACZM (Co-Director, Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center, OHI), Woutrina Smith, DVM, PhD (Co-Director, UC Center of Expertise in Planetary Health), Patricia Conrad, DVM, PhD (Associate Dean for Global Programs, UCD SVM), Paulina Zielinska, DVM, MPH, MPVM (Director, Office of Global Programs, UCD SVM), James Cullor, DVM, PhD (Professor Emeritus, Dairy Herd Health, UCD SVM) and Michael Wilkes, MD, MPH (Professor of Internal Medicine, UCD School of Medicine). These UCD-based faculty will be joined by principal instructors in Africa, including Professor Rudovick Kazwala (Professor, Veterinary Medicine and Public Health, Sokoine University, Tanzania) and Dr. Philip Cotton, Vice Chancellor, University of Rwanda). Other key partners will include staff of Ruaha and Volcanoes National Parks, as well as several non-governmental health and agriculture organizations and small-business enterprises working in communities surrounding protected areas, who will open doors to their programs and projects for Rx One Health students.
Cost – Course tuition is US $4,500/participant, inclusive of all travel within and between Tanzania and Rwanda. Important: Enrolled participants will be responsible for their own travel costs to Tanzania at the start of the course, and from Rwanda at the end of the course.
Application Instructions – Send a cover letter, the application form (available soon), and three letters of recommendation from individuals who can attest to your commitment, work ethic, and abilities as a team player. Application packets are due by 5pm PST on January 30, 2017, and are to be e-mailed to Elizabeth Chase, eschase@ucdavis.edu.
Applicants will be notified shortly after the application deadline as to whether or not they have been accepted into the program. Confirmation of enrollment and tuition payments will be due March 15, 2017.
For inquiries, please contact Paulina Zielinska, pmzielinska@ucdavis.edu.