The Status of One Health Education Among Undergraduate Pre-Health Students

One Health is collaborative, multidisciplinary approach to solving and studying health issues, from the local to global level, with special consideration given to the interdependency of human, animal, and environmental health. This thesis first dives into the history of One health and all the collaborative interactions between human and animal medicine. Then it will explore the data from a survey of Pre-Health students at Baylor University. In this survey, it was found that only 5.8% of students had heard of One Health and that these students seemed more knowledgeable about zoonotic disease. The vast majority of students agreed that One Health concepts would be useful to know in their future careers and expressed a desire to learn more about them. Lastly, this thesis argues the all healthcare professionals should be familiar with One Health concepts because they help provide a broader context for understanding human health, help impart knowledge about zoonotic diseases and how they can affect their patients, and it teaches how to think and work cooperatively with their colleagues and professionals in other fields. Also, undergraduate education is the best place to introduce One Health to students because of the natural collaborative and multidisciplinary environment in college.