Cornell University: Studying connections between animal-human health

As the COVID pandemic has so starkly taught us, human health is intricately connected to the health of animals, plants and the environment.

These connections and related impacts have been studied for decades, but are now receiving urgent attention under an approach called One Health. The transdisciplinary initiative, endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control, works at local, regional, national and global levels to look at the spread of existing or known and new or emerging zoonotic diseases.

At Cornell, one researcher focusing on these connections is Juno Salazar Parreñas, an assistant professor of science and technology studies. This summer, she’s hosting two Nexus Scholar interns — Mari Kramer ’23 and Aissatou Barry ’24 — to help with a project to map the research being done in this area, noting what diseases are being studied and in what countries, how researchers are approaching these problems and how they are developing solutions.