The One Health Concept: Bringing Together Human and Animal Health for New Solutions (Round 12)

Opportunity:

Over the last century, both human and veterinary medicine have made great advancements. In spite of the many overlaps between the two disciplines, they have become distinctly separate with very little cross-sharing of the knowledge. If the artificial barrier that separates the fields of human and animal health could be broken down, many opportunities would emerge across the discovery-development-delivery spectrum for knowledge and practices in one field to accelerate progress in the other.  For example, advances in drug and vaccine discoveries for human diseases can provide tools and approaches for animal diseases that still plague developing countries. Similarly, accumulated knowledge in veterinary medicine and animal nutrition and husbandry could provide insights into human nutrition and growth. This notion has been variously termed as "One Health" or "One Medicine." There is an opportunity to bring these divergent fields together under this One Health concept to address many difficult problems of the developing world.

We seek applications that apply the existing knowledge/tools/approaches from animal health to solve problems in human health, and vice versa.

What We Are Looking For:

Novel and innovative ideas within the concept of One Health to address the issues in the following areas, ranging from early discovery concepts to delivery of solutions to measurement of impact: 

1. Specific human and livestock diseases, as listed below;
2. Health service delivery;
3. Measurement of impact.

To be considered all proposals must either draw ideas from animal health to address human health or vice versa.

1.  Diseases:

• Translating knowledge and/or approaches from veterinary research to address the following human diseases:
  • Tuberculosis, malaria, parasitic diseases (specifically: lymphatic filariasis, visceral leishmaniasis, onchocerciasis, cryptosporidium, and soil transmitted helminth infections).
• Applying knowledge and/or approaches from human health-related research to address the following animal diseases:
  • Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP), endoparasites, ectoparasites, trypanosomiasis (T. congolense, T. vivax, T. Brucei brucei), contagious caprine pleuropneumonia, goat pox and sheep pox, bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis.
• Zoonotic diseases: New ideas and approaches to diagnose, control or treat the following zoonotic diseases at the human-animal interface: tuberculosis, brucellosis, leptospirosis, Q fever, trypanosomiasis, rabies and porcine cysticercosis.   

Areas can range from proposals exploiting "natural animal models" to better understand human diseases, vaccine and drug research, diagnostics, testing novel treatment or prevention strategies, epidemiology, understanding vaccine responses for these specific diseases and examining altered gut/intestinal function (e.g. environmental enteropathy) and microbiome dysfunction. Proposals that do not draw from the human field to benefit animal health problems and/or vice versa will not be considered.

2.  Health Service Delivery:

Combined service delivery (vaccinations, drugs, diagnostics, and other products) for human and animal health that can leverage existing health service delivery infrastructure in resource-poor settings. Examples of what we’re looking for include combined vaccination campaigns for human and animal diseases, or vaccines/treatments which can be administered to both humans and animals.  

3.  Combined Metrics for Measuring Impact:

In Global Health, we have routinely used DALYs (Disability adjusted life years) as a common metric. In agriculture and animal husbandry space, productivity is commonly used. However, we lack a combined metric which captures both of these impacts although they are closely linked. For example, improving agricultural productivity can lead to improved nutrition leading to increased DALYs. This could include a financial impact on society. We are seeking ideas for combining human and animal health under one metric that captures the broader impact. Proposed metrics should be detailed and testable with the funds allocated in Phase I.

 We will NOT CONSIDER funding for:

• Ideas that do not show clear human-animal health link;
• Traditional laboratory animal model studies as a precursor to human studies, without application to livestock health;
• Basic research (such as in vitro systems) without a substantially novel approach, or a clear application of veterinary techniques to human health and/or vice versa;
• Zoonotic diseases, with the exception of tuberculosis, brucellosis, leptospirosis, Q fever, trypanosomiasis, rabies and porcine cysticercosis;
• Disease areas that are not listed under section 1;
• Ideas that are not directly relevant to developing countries;
• Feeding programs;
• Microfinance programs;
• Adaptation of existing epidemiological models or tools;
• Biological surveillance and disease epidemiology projects which do not leverage One Health concepts;
• Ideas for which a relevant indicator of success cannot be demonstrated within the scope of the GCE Phase 1 award ($100k);
• Ideas without a clearly articulated and testable hypothesis and metrics;
• Solely infrastructure or capacity-building initiatives, including but not limited to educational programs;
• Proposals seeking to develop new frameworks for evaluating metrics without specific testable combined metrics proposed.