From Vision to Action: Prioritizing in One Health

Abstract

One Health is an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize human, animal, and environmental health by recognizing their interdependence and encouraging collaboration across sectors and disciplines. While progress has been made in applying One Health to complex health issues, putting these strategies into practice remains difficult due to resource (eg, funds), structural (eg, governance) and situational (eg, political) constraints and gaps in infrastructure and capacity. These limitations often force decisionmakers to prioritize certain health issues over others. Prioritization by its nature counters the ethos of One Health, reducing the complexity of health systems to a few key outcome goals or actions. To leverage the strengths of One Health, while recognizing the rigidity of real-world health systems, we propose key considerations and strategies for prioritization within this framework. We advocate for cross-sectoral communication structures that support proactive, collaborative networks. Effective collaboration must extend beyond professional circles to include meaningful engagement with communities, ensuring that local context and lived experience inform decisionmaking. We highlight the importance of multisolving—identifying interventions that provide cobenefits across sectors—and the need for adaptive strategies that address both immediate needs and long-term goals. As we navigate a polycrisis of health threats (such as pathogens) and threat multipliers (such as climate change and antimicrobial resistance), embracing flexibility and adaptive thinking is essential for translating One Health ideals into practical applications that are feasible, politically viable, and socially relevant.