Abstract
Our ability to tackle the looming human, animal, and global ecosystem health threats arising from the issues of climate change and extreme weather events will require effective and creative cross-disciplinary collaboration. There is a growing national and international interest in equipping the next generation of clinicians and health scientists for success in facing these important challenges by providing interprofessional training opportunities. This paper describes how we assembled an interdisciplinary team of experts to design and deliver a case-based discussion on a cross-species illness outbreak in animals and humans using a One Health framework. The small group, case-based approach highlighted the impact of climate change-driven extreme weather events on human and animal health using a diarrhea outbreak associated with a contaminated community water supply precipitated by extreme flooding. Post-activity survey data indicated that this team-taught learning activity successfully engaged a cross-disciplinary cohort of medical, veterinary, and public health students in the issues of environmental public health threats and helped them understand the importance of an integrative, cross-functional, team-based approach for solving complex problems. The data from this study is being used to plan similar interprofessional, One Health learning activities across the health sciences curriculum in our institution.
Data Availability
Material for the activity is available per request.
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Authors’ contributions are as follows: Grace L. Park, conception and design of the work, data collection, drafting, critical revision, and final approval of the article; William E. Sander, conception and design of the work, data collection, drafting, critical revision, and final approval of the article; Sheena E. Martenies, design of the work, data collection, data analysis, and interpretation, drafting, critical revision, and final approval of the article; Holly Rosencranz, design of the work, drafting, critical revision, and final approval of the article; Laura Rice, design of the work and final approval of the article; Japhia Jayasingh-Ramkumar, design of the work and final approval of the article; Sarah Michaels, design of the work, critical revision, and final approval of the article; Brian Aldridge, design of the work, critical revision, and final approval of the article.
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Park, G.L., Sander, W.E., Martenies, S.E. et al. Beyond the Imodium, a One Health Discussion on Diarrhea and the Impact of Climate Change. Med.Sci.Educ. 33, 1049–1053 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-023-01865-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-023-01865-1