Towards a 'One Health' research and application tool box

Summary The ‘One Medicine’ concept by Calvin Schwabe has seen an unprecedented revival in the last decade and has evolved towards ‘One Health’ conceptual thinking, emphasising epidemio‐logy and public health. Pathologists rightly recall the contribution of their discipline by close genomic relationship of animals and humans e.g. in cancer genetics. We need to change our ‘us versus them’ perspective towards a perspective of ‘shared risk’ between humans and animals. Professional organis‐ations have declared their adhesion, govern‐ments have created joint public and animal health working groups and numerous research and surveillance programmes have been incepted as demonstrated on the ‘One Health Initiative’ website. Above all these beneficial developments, we should not forget however, that there remains a huge divide between human and veterinary medicine borne from unprecedented (over) specialisation of disciplines and increasingly reductionist approaches to scientific inquiry. What is required now is a radical paradigm shift in our approach to global public health with practical approaches and ‘hands‐on’ examples to facilitate its application and accelerating necessary leverage of ‘One Health’. We propose elements of an open ‘tool box’ translating the ‘One Health’ concept into practical methods in the fields of integrated disease surveillance, joint animal‐human epidemiological studies and health services development, which we hope might serve as a discussion basis for mutually agreed practical cooperation between human and animal health with special emphasis on developing countries.