New interesting post-graduate course on UAB: One Health

Next course, the faculty of Veterinary of our university, the Autonomous University of Barcelona will begin a new master called: "Official Master's Degree in Zoonoses and One Health". This master is lead by our colleagues we are currently collaborating in some projects like focus groups o a possible joint-project.

You can acces to the master's webpage here. In this page you will find how to apply to the admission, what is about it (content, teaching staff, etc), grants and a lot of more things. We leave a little sample from the official page:

The Master's Degree in Zoonosis and One Health is a professionally oriented programme that responds to a need for professionals with a well-rounded, multidisciplinary training encompassing human, animal and environmental health, who can work effectively and collaboratively on the prevention, control, management and communication of biological hazards and threats. This is the concept behind the new term "One Health". It means seeking to defend and improve the health and welfare of all species (humans, animals and plants) through greater cooperation between professionals working in public health, animal health and environmental health, and so to promote a multidisciplinary approach to health risk at the interface between humans, animals and the ecosystem.
 
The University Master's degree in Zoonosis and One Health will serve to train up highly qualified professionals to work in both the public and the private sector, with a multidisciplinary vision of One Health, in line with the requirements of the major international health bodies, like the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). It is the first official master's degree in One Health in the whole of the Mediterranean area.

For anyone that does not know anything about One Health, it is a concept related with the creation of a unique-single health, composed by animal, human, public and any other kind of health. In this vein, borders between species, disciplines or realms of knowledge are proposed to be broken.

From wikipedia: "One Health has been defined as "the collaborative effort of multiple disciplines — working locally, nationally, and globally — to attain optimal health for people, animals and the environment"

Photo Credit: Syed Asad Ali

New possible collaboration: POBICS & Veterinary

Along our work last months with Focus Group, we contacted with some researchers of the Veterinary's Faculty in our university. It was a very interesting task because it was a very different participants and due to his expertise, he offered a lot of important information. Furthermore, they was so interesting too in our work because they were carrying out a project in farms with vets and farmers about risk perception and biosecurity. 

In this vein, they said us they have found they need a psychosocial aspect in order tu fulfill their knowledge, because some questions related with why (or why not) farmers apply biosecurity mesures in their farms. 

Now, a few months later, we are preparing a new project with this great people in order to learn from them and collaborate in the kind of tasks they need. 

As quick as we can, we will post more information about the particular objectives and what will be our particular role within this project. We are planning some consensus conference with farmers and vets in order to design and improve a tool to risk analysis; and also we could prepare some focus groups and ethnography in this farms in order to know how biosecurity is conceived and practised in this places. 

We will cross fingers, it would be a very interesting work!

Photo Credit: Random Drift