34 International Scholars Get Intensive One Health Training at Duke

One Health Trainees View Mosquito in Microscope

One Health trainees Ambreen Chaudhry from Pakistan (center) and Duke Master of Science in Global Health student Jessica Choi (right), show Duke One Health team member Jane Fieldhouse a mosquito they’ve identified during the Introduction to Entomology, Zoonotic Diseases and Food Safety course. Photo by Greg Gray.

Published June 11, 2018 under Research News

Each summer for the past four years, several dozen international public health and veterinary professionals come together at Duke for a three-week, nine-credit One Health Training Program. Comprised of four short courses, the program offers an overview and hands-on learning in fields such as epidemiology, entomology, zoonotic diseases, outbreak investigations and virology, to name just a few. 

One Health is a public health framework that explores how the health of the environment, animals and humans are all connected. Given that six out of every 10 infectious diseases in humans are spread from animals, this integrated approach is necessary to address major global health challenges. One Health encourages collaboration between countries, disciplines, governments and industries to create a robust ecosystem that will improve global health. 

In addition to classroom instruction, the One Health Training Program incorporates field trips to places such as the Randolph Packing Company (meat safety), Duke Forest (entomology studies), Duke Lemur Center (ecology), the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (metagenomic studies) and the North Carolina State University Dairy Education Unit (food safety). 

Each year, the program taps into the expertise of about twenty experts from academic and governmental partnering institutions. For example, this year, Cheryl Stroud, executive director of the One Health Commission, and Michael Martin, director of the poultry division at the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, were guest lecturers.

This year’s 34 trainees hailed from eight countries: China, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, The Philippines and the U.S. The class included international public health and veterinary professionals, Duke graduate students and a Duke professor. 

The program has been received well by the trainees. One of them commented, “This program is far more than an academic course. Dr. Gray takes the time to teach, coach and mentor the scholars one-on-one.” Another trainee found the “diverse selection of trainees from different fields and from multiple countries” to be one of the most valuable aspects of the program.

Greg Gray, professor of medicine, global health and environmental health, developed the program about ten years ago as a faculty member at the University of Iowa. This year, Jane Fieldhouse MS’17 and Laura Borkenhagen MS’17 coordinated the program in collaboration with postdoctoral fellow Emily Bailey and Gray.  

“We very much enjoy working with international scholars,” said Gray. “They often have urgent complex public health, veterinary health or environmental health problems that benefit from taking a One Health approach, and they have wonderful examples to share.”

In addition to traveling the world as a One Health researcher, Gray is an avid photographer. Here’s a sampling of his photos from the program (see more photos here):

 
 

(From left) Muhammad Junaid Nawaz (Pakistan), Wendell Asuncion (Philippines), Victoria Clemons (U.S.)
and Sarmad Siddiqui (Pakistan), watch Duke One Health team member Laura Borkenhagen demonstrate
gel electrophoresis while Hadiqa Raees from Pakistan practices the technique on the right.

 
 

DGHI professor Chris Woods gives a lecture on the importance of
emerging antimicrobial resistance to the One Health trainees.

 
 

Nancy Henshaw, section head of Virology, Serology and Parasitology in the Clinical Microbiology
Laboratory at the Duke University Medical Center, gives students a tour of Duke Hospital’s
Clinical Microbiology lab during the Public Health Laboratory Techniques course.

 
 

Assistant professor of global health Matt Rubach (center) and Duke Master of International
Development Policy students Victoria Clemons (left) and Kemal Kabeto (right)
capture mosquitos in the Duke Forest using a CDC light trap.

 
 

Shaimaa AbdAllah from Egypt (left) and Dania Saeed from Pakistan (right) hunt for
mosquito larvae in the Duke Forest while, behind them, their classmates
collect ticks using a cloth specifically designed for this purpose.

 
 

Group photo: 2018 One Health Training Program scholars.

The One Health Training Program is supported or endorsed by the U.S. Department of State, Duke Global Health Institute, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University School of Medicine and North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine.

Learn more about Duke One Health:

This program is far more than an academic course. Dr. Gray takes the time to teach, coach and mentor the scholars one-on-one.

One Health Training Program scholar

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