The University of Glasgow held their inaugural One Health Day Conference on 28th June 2016. The conference brought together industrial, academic, government and non-governmental organisations and was designed to promote discussion, debate and networking around One Health and provide a platform for awareness raising of current research as well as look at potential future opportunities for collaboration.
The conference encouraged different organisations to think about One Health and Scotland’s research and industry strengths at a local, national and international level.
Dr. Mike Salter, AB AGRI, offered an industry perspective and highlighted the main challenges for agriculture are sustainability, animal welfare and profitability. He also highlighted that the gap between academia and industry needs to be addressed by industry identifying and explaining what it wants. On a parallel note, Prof. Dominic Mellor from HPS & EPIC UK Antimicrobial Strategy pointed out how One Health has been driven by veterinary medicine and both academia and industry need to identify how to cross the divide between veterinary and human medicine.
A final take-away from the conference was that One Health interventions are often seen to need high tech solutions when in fact, there may be a simple solution of delivery through local communities, underscoring the importance of co-operation between the social sciences and applied sciences.
If you are interested in speaking to us about our involvement in the One Health space, please contact Amy Lam.
