For our October 21 Zoom meeting, Susan VandeWoude, DVM, the director of the CSU One Health Institute and head of CSU’s Medical Sciences Training Program (MSTP), gave us an overview of these two programs which focus on the interconnected health issues between humans, animals, and the environment.  The One Health Institute is designed to train a physician/scientist workforce, a workforce whose members have both a broad expertise in clinical care (with MD, DO, or DVM degree) and specific expertise around the interface of basic sciences and clinical sciences (recognized by granting of the PhD degree).

Dr. VandeWoude pointed out that, in the area of research about problems in health between humans, animals and the environment, a veterinarian has some advantages over a medical doctor in that the DVM is familiar with a broader range of expression of different genomic, metabolic, and physiological features.  Thus, a DVM is likely to think in terms of human possibilities with respect to interaction between humans and animals: the DVM benefits from development of a comparative capacity, thinks in translational terms, is familiar with issues at both the individual and the population level, is more familiar with zoonotic diseases (diseases passed from animal to human), and will probably have a more versatile education. 
 
The Medical Sciences Training Program (MSTP) was re-invigorated some 15 years ago and has received some 40 applicants for the two to three positions available in the 2021 class.  This program has a long time commitment, on the order of five years.  A new student will typically spend the first year establishing his PhD program (course work plus finding a lab and an appropriate problem to research), the next one to two years doing the course work for the DVM degree, the next one to two years doing the research for his PhD program, and the final one to two years focused on veterinary practice leading to the DVM degree.  Students may study animal diseases, human diseases, infectious diseases, cancer biology, nutritional and preventative approaches, metabolic diseases, or neurologic diseases.  On the broader front, they will study environmental health and translational (across species boundaries) medicine.  With their dual degrees, students mostly go into research-related careers (academic, government, etc.) with fewer going into private practice or on to post-docs or residency for more advanced training. 
 
When the program started in 2004, there was funding for one year of support for each student but now there is sufficient funding for full support for all students, although each student is encouraged to get external funding.  There is currently an expectation that the program will be able to expand by about one student per year. 
 
The One Health Institute focuses on the intersection between human, environmental, and animal health.  The One Medicine aspect of this program focuses on the animal (mostly dogs, cats, and horses) and the relationship with their human owners.  One of the advantages of this approach is that treatment may be implemented in the animals in their homes and get both help and information from the human owners.  This makes it possible to address Behavioral Medical issues at the level of one-on-one interaction as well as one on many, including the effect of mass euthanasia (e.g., meat-animal slaughter) on the caretaking-farmers.  Since individuals participate in the program from a variety of different disciplines, it is possible to look at problems at a high or system level.  Thus, using Covid-19 as an example, it is possible to look at the interaction between humans, domesticate and wild animals, and wet markets (one of the interesting discoveries is that the disease appears to be able to be passed from animal to human and then to another animal).  It is possible to bring in the contribution of global transportation as well as political reaction.  It also contributes to the science behind development of vaccines. 
 
With respect to the diversity of incoming and outgoing participants in the program, now some 80 – 85% of the participants (and applicants) are women.  In the process of interviewing prospective participants, the faculty try to look for those interested in going into research. 
 
The program has been quite successful in acquiring competitive NIH funding, although there are always more potential problems or projects that there are either people to address them or funding to support them. 
 
She was very careful in addressing a question about inoculation with a disease, pointing out that with humans it is essential that there be a relatively reliable treatment for the disease, that the subjects be well informed with respect to the disease and that they give informed consent, and that the inoculated population be sufficiently diverse as to provide a good statistical distribution of the breadth of effect of any result.  With animals, there are fewer ethical problems with inoculation of a sample with a disease as long as the diversity of the population is sufficiently great as to provide a reasonable test of the effectiveness of any intervention.