Interconnectedness of human, ecosystem, and animal health. (Images courtesy of R. Sholes / G. Kaufman, Tufts University)

The One Health course is an inaugural course in the newly created University Seminar program, which furthers Tufts' goal to prepare leaders with a rich and textured understanding of the world in all its complexity and diversity. Major aims of the University Seminar are to enhance the interface between research and teaching, to develop new research questions through trans-disciplinary approaches to a global issue, and to develop innovative teaching and learning methods that can be applied to the larger Tufts community, and its existing and emerging programs.

In the One Health course, faculty from all three campuses will provide expertise and guidance for individual and group teaching and learning, to help better understand the complex nature of these problems and to reveal innovative solutions. Enrolled students have come from undergraduate and graduate programs from across the University, representing graduate biomedical sciences (PhD), engineering (BS, MS), biology/community health (BS), and public health (MPH). They will examine and represent their discipline's perspective and tools to other group members; learn and incorporate other disciplines into their own thinking; and collaborate with others on the development of new, synthesized solutions. The course will explore interdisciplinary team-oriented approaches to complex health problems and set a framework for similar cross-school collaborative learning and teaching experiences at Tufts.

Emerging challenges to human, animal and ecosystem health demand novel solutions. New diseases are emerging from unique configurations of humans, their domestic animals and wildlife; significant new pressures on once robust and resilient ecosystems are compromising their integrity; synthetic compounds and engineered organisms, recently introduced to the natural world, are spreading unpredictably around the globe. Globalization is also providing opportunities for infectious organisms to gain access to naive hosts, which in turn leads to changing patterns of disease distribution and virulence.The course will explore interdisciplinary team-oriented approaches to complex health problems and set a framework for similar cross-school collaborative learning and teaching experiences at Tufts. The course is lead by four faculty members from the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, the School of Medicine, and the School of Arts & Sciences.