Beyond the Imodium, a One Health Discussion on Diarrhea and the Impact of Climate Change.
Grace L Park, William E Sander, Sheena E Martenies, Holly Rosencranz, Laura A Rice, Japhia Jayasingh-Ramkumar, Sarah Michaels, Brian Aldridge
Author Information
Grace L Park: Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL USA. ORCID
William E Sander: Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL USA. ORCID
Sheena E Martenies: Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL USA.
Holly Rosencranz: Department of Clinical Sciences, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL USA.
Laura A Rice: Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL USA. ORCID
Japhia Jayasingh-Ramkumar: Department of Clinical Sciences, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL USA.
Sarah Michaels: Champaign-Urbana Public Health District, Champaign, IL USA.
Brian Aldridge: Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL USA.
Our ability to tackle the looming human, animal, and global ecosystem health threats arising from the issues of climate change and extreme weather events will require effective and creative cross-disciplinary collaboration. There is a growing national and international interest in equipping the next generation of clinicians and health scientists for success in facing these important challenges by providing interprofessional training opportunities. This paper describes how we assembled an interdisciplinary team of experts to design and deliver a case-based discussion on a cross-species illness outbreak in animals and humans using a One Health framework. The small group, case-based approach highlighted the impact of climate change-driven extreme weather events on human and animal health using a diarrhea outbreak associated with a contaminated community water supply precipitated by extreme flooding. Post-activity survey data indicated that this team-taught learning activity successfully engaged a cross-disciplinary cohort of medical, veterinary, and public health students in the issues of environmental public health threats and helped them understand the importance of an integrative, cross-functional, team-based approach for solving complex problems. The data from this study is being used to plan similar interprofessional, One Health learning activities across the health sciences curriculum in our institution.
