Sylvia's Journal

I have started to offer complimentary ‘grounding’ sessions for organizations or teams I have worked with in the past. I will expand this shortly and put something on my website for anyone to take advantage of. It will keep me, at least professionally, on my toes.

Yesterday I did such a session with one team from my alma mater, MSH. One of the team members reflected on two things that deeply resonated with me: how we are all connected, across boundaries of any kind, when dealing with a highly contagious disease, and how health and economy are inextricably linked.

Having worked most of my professional life in the global health arena, these two statements are of the ‘duhhhh’ kind, truisms for us global/public health professionals. We know them to be true, and repeated them and over again. We said it in the introductions of books, the first slides of a PowerPoint presentation and opening remarks at conferences and workshops. But, except for the occasional deadly outbreak in a corner of some faraway country or region, for the privilged few (and those with power to act) these statements were just that, words that had been repeated so often that they had no power.

And now, look at us: economies in shambles, people feeling isolated, anxious, and many without any obvious means to support their families now and in the near future.  Employer-based health insurance seemed good enough to all people who had it (except to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and their followers) but that idea together with the belief that sick leave is a luxury, now lie on the garbage heap together with all the used gloves and masks.

In this new world we are living in now, I hope that the idea of interconnectedness (people, animals, economies) is taking on a new meaning and lead to action.

The most interesting and pertinent concept at this time is that of ‘One Health.’ It refers to a multisectoral and transdisciplinary approach focused on enabling optimal health outcomes by recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment.  From the website of UC Davis, I learned that it was Dr. Calvin Schwabe — an epidemiology professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine — who coined the term “One Medicine” in his book, Veterinary Medicine and Human Health in 1964. 

A further exploration of the website revealed three staggering statements that may have come as a surprise to people only a few months ago. Now, I think most  people will accept them as ‘very likely true’ (rather than fake news): 1 in 6 people in the US alone will become sick from a foodborne illness at an estimated annual cost of $77 billion. Approximate 800 viruses were identified by the USAID-funded PREDICT project that were not previously known to science, and about 1.4 billion people are affected by mosquito-borne diseases each year.  And if you are curious about what else is out there, the One Health Initiative has its own website with a map of the world that tells you.

That everything and everyone is connected to everything and everyone else on this planet is something that chronically underfunded public health organizations have known forever and have tried to convince governments off: it pays to pay attention to public health (including maternal and child health, infectious disease prevention, family planning, etc.) – don’t get me going.

By the way, knowing what we know now, it is appaling to read about the shuttering last year of the PREDICT project by an anti-science, America-first administration. I wonder what the politically risk-averse people or those who thought the project was an expensive luxury (a basic research project) now think about that decision.