There is growing global commitment to the One Health approach, which unites investments in human, animal, and ecosystem health to better address boundary-crossing risks like pandemics, zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and food safety. Yet turning national ambitions, commitments, and strategies into implementation often remains a challenge.
For over four decades, CGIAR scientists and partners have conducted One Health research and interventions across Africa and Asia, working with communities, businesses, extension workers, governments, researchers, and policymakers. This work involves communities, businesses, extension workers, local and national governments, researchers and policy makers. It mobilizes inter-disciplinary expertise and applies solutions in cities, on farms, in markets, along supply and consumption chains and with pastoralists.
This series of briefs collates evidence and experience from that work to identify models and lessons for putting One Health into practice. Together, the briefs show that One Health puts down roots when communities help design interventions, disciplines come together around common ground, governments own and resource the structures that sustain them, and funding extends beyond pilot projects.
Five lessons for implementation
- Implementation is the gap. Most countries now have One Health strategies, but sectors and experts still work in silos, and services struggle to coherently reach communities most at risk.
- Interventions work when they fit their context. Communities and the people tasked to serve them must be involved from the outset. Trust and capacity determine whether tools, knowledge, and strategies actually get used.
- Coordination has to be built. Structures like working groups, platforms, field sites, and integrated delivery units are critical to turn shared commitment into collaborative action.
- Good policy is based on evidence and continually informed by it. Knowledge on One Health is always evolving, and policies should, too.
- Scaling requires government ownership and long-term funding. Promising pilots can become national practice when governments provide mandates, incentives, and budgets, donors fund both the start and the transition, and countries learn from each other’s experiences.
This work was produced as part of the CGIAR Sustainable Animal and Aquatic Foods Program (SAAF), which works across Africa, Asia, and Latin America to improve access to nutritious foods, reduce emissions and support inclusive livelihoods.
We thank all donors supporting CGIAR through the CGIAR Trust Fund.
