About 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.

What you'll learn

Students who complete this course will:

  • Have a solid understanding of the One Health concept
  • Be able to identify how One Health can provide a lens through which to view a variety of challenging situations in human, animal, and environmental health
  • Explain how the One Health approach can lead to sustainable solutions to critical issues facing communities in the Circumpolar North and beyond

Students will also:

  • Explain the One Health paradigm, particularly as it relates to the Circumpolar North
  • Describe the ten thousand-year history of One Health
  • Explore interrelationships between human, animal, and environmental health
  • Provide examples of challenges best addressed through the One Health paradigm
  • Explain why previous approaches to problem-solving have failed
  • Differentiate between reductionist and constructionist approaches to problem solving and explain why One Health utilizes the constructionist approach
  • Describe how Traditional ways of knowing and Western science can be used together to understand and manage One Health issues

Click here for more information about the Syllabus and to register to the course. 

The One Health project is related to the work of the UArctic Thematic Network on Health and Well-being in the Arctic.