By Kathleen Edison / For The Herald
Too often, public health is treated as if it exists in a bubble, concerned only with people. But our survival is tied to the health of every other ecosystem: animals, plants, microbes, and the environment we all share.
This is the foundation of One Health, an approach that recognizes the health of people, animals, and the environment as inseparable, and that protecting one ecosystem means protecting them all. When we ignore these connections, we miss early warning signs of disaster, and the cost of that delay can be measured in lives.
In 1999, Dr. Tracey McNamara, head pathologist at the Bronx Zoo, noticed something strange; an unusual number of dead birds, especially crows, across New York City. Around the same time, infectious disease doctor Dr. Deborah Asnis was treating patients with unexplained neurological symptoms. McNamara suspected there was a link.
Her autopsies revealed brain lesions in the birds, consistent with encephalitis. She suspected a mosquito-borne pathogen and urgently contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They dismissed her concerns because the disease was not directly impacting humans. Undeterred, she turned to veterinary labs and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Scientists there identified the culprit: West Nile virus, a pathogen never before seen in the Western Hemisphere. Only then did the connection between the bird deaths and the human illnesses become undeniable.
McNamara’s persistence is a textbook example of One Health in action, recognizing that the health of humans, animals and the environment are part of the same system. Without her ability to see across disciplines, the outbreak might have gone unidentified for far longer. The same patterns, the warning signs that nature gives us before they affect human health, are playing out all around us today. Ignoring them can have deadly consequences.
Signals we can’t afford to ignore: Earlier this year, animals in King and Snohomish counties tested positive for avian flu after eating contaminated raw pet food. This was a reminder that what begins as a wildlife health issue can move into our homes in the blink of an eye .
Washington wildlife officials also recently banned feeding deer, elk, and moose to slow the spread of chronic wasting disease, a brain-wasting illness that doesn’t just devastate animal populations, it threatens the delicate balance between species. It’s the kind of quiet policy move that saves ecosystems before they unravel, even if it never makes front-page news.
And in Puget Sound and the larger Salish Sea, species that have been here for centuries like salmon, Pacific herring, great blue herons, even the orcas that are an icon of our region, are struggling. Pollution, warming waters, and habitat loss don’t just harm these animals, they unravel the web of life that includes our own food systems, our economy, and even our identity as Washingtonians.
Around the world, we are seeing other warning signs as well. From unexplained mass die-offs in species to rabbits affected by fungal facial growths that prevent them from eating to blue whales falling eerily silent, a change in behavior that could indicate deeper ocean ecosystem stress. These may seem far from our daily lives, but like every signal from nature, they are part of the same interconnected system that shapes human health.
When a key species disappears: When a key species disappears, the shockwaves hit our own kitchens. Take pollinators such as bees; without them, more than one-third of our food crops, including almonds, apples, blueberries and countless vegetables, could fail within a single season. The result wouldn’t just be empty shelves, but soaring prices for what remains, piling onto an economy already burdened by historically elevated food inflation.
Public health is far more than hospitals and vaccines. It is clean water laws, monitoring programs that spot collapsing food chains, and safeguards against dangerous chemicals in our soil and air. These protections are invisible when they work. When they’re cut, the consequences are anything but.
Too often, tax cuts for the wealthy come with cuts to environmental monitoring, clean water programs, and public health budgets. Once certain ecosystems collapse, there may be no way to rebuild them.
What you can do: We can’t afford to wait for the next outbreak, collapse, or ecological tipping point to force our hand. You can stand with organizations like the University of Washington’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies (CICOES), which advances research on climate and ecosystem interactions, and Conservation Northwest, which works to keep the Northwest wild by protecting critical landscapes and wildlife corridors. Supporting these efforts isn’t just an investment in nature, it’s an investment in our own future.
One Health is not an abstract concept; it is how we keep the systems we all depend on from unravelling.
Kathleen Edison is a doctor of public health candidate at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She specializes in public health emergency preparedness innovation through a One Health systems-thinking lens to strengthen disaster resilience. She lives in Lynnwood.
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