One Health: Health is built before it’s treated – From the Column ‘Medicine – Highlights’

When talking about “One Health,” there’s a risk of using complex words to describe a very simple idea: the health of humans, animals, and the environment is closely interconnected. These aren’t separate worlds, but parts of the same system.

One Health isn’t an abstract theory or a slogan.

It’s a different way of doing prevention. It means recognizing that many diseases don’t originate in the doctor’s office, but much earlier: in farms, food supply chains, antibiotic use, pollution, and our lifestyles. When the doctor meets the patient, they often see only the final link in a much longer chain.

Consider antibiotic resistance.

A resistant infection appearing in the hospital is the result of years of antibiotic use in human and veterinary medicine, as well as in animal production. It’s a phenomenon that crosses geographical borders and different sectors. The individual illness represents the final outcome of a collective process.

That’s why clinical practice remains essential, but it can’t be isolated. It intervenes when the problem is already evident. One Health aims to act earlier: identifying risks, reducing them, preventing them. This doesn’t weaken medicine—it strengthens it. A doctor can make more effective decisions if they also understand the environmental, dietary, and production factors influencing the patient’s health.

An example is the study of the microbiota.

Today, we can describe with great precision the microorganisms present in our bodies. But knowing “who’s there” isn’t enough if we don’t understand why. Diet, environment, drug use, and food quality all contribute to shaping that balance. Without this broader view, there’s a risk of having sophisticated data that’s of little use for real prevention.

One Health therefore promotes collaboration between doctors, veterinarians, environmental experts, and production sector professionals. Everyone retains their own expertise, but integrates it with that of others. It’s not just a sum of knowledge: it’s a change in perspective.

Reducing One Health to a purely clinical approach means losing its power. Its main goal is to prevent, not just treat. In a world marked by environmental crises, globalized supply chains, and the spread of antimicrobial resistance, thinking of health as a single system isn’t a theoretical exercise: it’s a concrete necessity.

In the end, health is truly one. And protecting it requires a gaze capable of seeing the connections before the consequences.