One Health Day

As a concept, "One Health," which recognizes the link between the health of people, animals and the environment, has been embraced by public health officials, virologists and veterinary scientists, but it has found a toehold all through the sciences. With the second annual One Health Day taking place on Nov. 3, Flad's planners and designers note an intensifying interest in research buildings that are flexibly designed to encourage collaboration.

Many recent Flad buildings, from the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) at City University of New York to the University of Saskatchewan Collaborative Sciences Research Building (CSRB), fit this description. Even the forthcoming healthcare-oriented Medical College of Wisconsin Professional Office Building, which will join the campus's Medical Education and Health Research Center and Wisconsin Diagnostic Laboratories, is billed as a dedicated central workplace that brings physicians, nurse practitioners, researchers and healthcare staff together to foster innovation and collaboration.

The trend is most apparent in the agricultural sciences sector, where in addition to the ASRC and CSRB, Flad has designed and completed numerous research buildings, all of which are designed to include formal and informal collaborative areas of varying sizes to increase opportunities for interdisciplinary interaction. The University of Saskatchewan so explicitly endorses a systemic approach to One Health that it will host both the 5th International One Health Congress and the International Conference on Diseases in Nature Communicable to Man in June 2018, just after the CSRB officially opens.

One Health Day is an international campaign co-coordinated by the One Health Commission, the One Health Initiative Autonomous pro bono Team and the One Health Platform Foundation.

November 03, 2017