Solving Global Health Problems Through One Health.
The Public and One Health (PAOH) undergraduate degree program in the Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine stands out as a unique public health program that utilizes One Health as its guiding principle. This holistic approach prepares graduates of the program to proactively devise and implement solutions to pressing local and global health issues.
Mission Statement
Our mission is to prepare undergraduate students for success in introductory public health careers or graduate and professional programs by providing a quality curriculum taught by faculty from diverse academic disciplines and opportunities for service-learning, internships and undergraduate research. Students learn to apply the One Health concept to promote the health of the environment, human and animal populations as future leaders in public health.
Vision Statement
The Auburn University Bachelor of Science program in Public and One Health will inspire future generations to champion a broad, action-oriented perspective of health that transcends the bounds of discipline, organism or system.
Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) Accreditation Status Statement
The College of Veterinary Medicine is an applicant for accreditation by the Council on Education for Public Health. The accreditation review will address the B.S. degree in Public and One Health. Other degrees and areas of study offered by the College of Veterinary Medicine will not be included in the unit of accreditation review.
Program Description
By highlighting the One Health concept throughout the curriculum, undergraduate students enrolled in the program will obtain a comprehensive public health education that emphasizes the interconnectedness and mutual interdependency of humans, animals, and the environment. Diverse faculty from multiple scientific fields within the College of Veterinary Medicine and across the Auburn University campus will provide expert instruction to foster deeper insight into organismal and environmental health and how various systems coexist and change together. The program will prepare undergraduate students for success in a variety of introductory public health positions or graduate or professional programs.
While public health focuses on population health and prevention of disease in humans, One Health incorporates the interconnectedness between human, animal and environmental health more broadly, recognizing that human health can only be improved if the health of animals and the ecosystem are concurrently addressed. One Health was founded as a strategy to develop and expand transdisciplinary collaborations across multiple sectors to address complex issues at the human-animal-ecosystem interface. These issues include (but are not limited to) zoonotic and vector-borne disease, food safety, biosecurity, pandemic preparedness, antimicrobial resistance, hunger, and global health issues relating to climate change. The recent introduction and spread of SARS CoV-2 is just one of many serious global health issues requiring immediate attention and is a direct result of environmental disturbance and human interaction with wild animal populations. The Public and One Health undergraduate degree program will educate future health professionals to take a transdisciplinary approach that establishes a conceptual framework of the complex web of factors affecting health.
Students enrolled in the Public and One Health degree program will graduate with an understanding of basic concepts in the following fields:
- Core concepts of public health and population health
- Public health policy and ethics
- Epidemiology and biostatistics
- Social and behavioral determinants of health
- Global health and comparative health systems
- Science of health and disease
- Microbiology and infectious disease
- Climate change impacts on health
- Environmental health
- Human impacts on ecosystems and wildlife
- Emergencies and disasters
Contact
Email: paoh@auburn.edu
Phone: (334) 844-3717
Frank F. (Skip) Bartol, MS, PhD
Alumni Professor &
Associate Dean
bartoff@auburn.edu
Andrea Perkins, PhD, MPH, CPH
Co-Director, Public and One Health Program
Department of Clinical Sciences
avp0010@auburn.edu
Kelley Steury, DVM, MPH, DACVPM
Co-Director, Public and One Health Program
Department of Pathobiology
kbsteury@auburn.edu
Genta Stanfield M.Ed., Ed.S.
Student Services Coordinator III
Public and One Health Major
gms0008@auburn.edu