One Health: Understanding Where Public Health and Veterinary Science Meet, with Dr. Jane Kelly

ONE HEALTH:

Understanding Where Public Health and Veterinary Science Meet, with Dr. Jane Kelly

Dr. Jane Kelly is a veterinary diagnostician, director of the Central Utah Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Spanish Fork, president-elect of the Utah Veterinary Medical Association, and part of Utah State University’s master of veterinary public health program. She is in a unique position to explain how public health and veterinary science intersect — and why that matters now more than ever.

How does veterinary medicine tie into public health? Dr. Kelly: Veterinary science and public health are entwined in many different ways. Graduating veterinary students take an oath to protect public health as well as to ease animal suffering and protect our animal resources. Veterinarians that work in food safety, such as meat and egg inspection, protect public health in prevention and early detection of pathogens that may cause severe foodborne illness in people.

In addition to having a doctorate in veterinary science, you also earned a master of public health (MPH) degree. How has that education affected your work? Dr. Kelly: I have been interested in the MPH program for practicing veterinarians offered by the University of Iowa since I first heard about it in 2007. Finally, in 2012, everything came together, and with support from ADVS, I was able to start the degree. I have wanted to be a vet since I was about 8 years old, and I have been interested in public health since living in Zambia as a young person. I also work in veterinary diagnostics, and many of our cases have public health implications. For example, if we diagnose salmonellosis in an animal that died, we tell the owners to be careful when handling other animals in the group because salmonella is potentially zoonotic — it can spread from animals to humans, especially if they’re immunocompromised. The MPH degree increased my understanding of zoonotic diseases and public health. This is information I use in my role as a veterinary diagnostician and microbiologist at the Utah Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. The degree also gave me the fantastic opportunity to be on the steering committee of the new master of veterinary public health program at USU. Without my MPH, I would have missed the chance to help design a new graduate program and interact with students, things that have really enriched my work life.

Can you speak a bit about the idea of One Health? How does it tie into the current pandemic? Dr. Kelly: The concept of One Health is a local and international effort to gain insight into the interactions between human health, animal health, and the environment with the ultimate goal of attaining health for all, including our environment. As you can imagine, multiple people and agencies are involved, from the World Health Organization and Environmental Protection Agency to individual veterinarians, physicians, and public health officials. This idea has been around for several decades, but it relates to the current pandemic in many ways. For instance, there were reports of big cats at zoos that developed SARS-CoV-2 after showing signs of coughing and decreased appetite. Risk to other animals, workers, and the public was minimized because of the social distancing measures that have been in place. This is an example of using a One Health approach to minimize spread of disease to people and animals and reduce environmental contamination.

Where might new zoonotic diseases appear in the future? Dr. Kelly: With climate change, deforestation, population growth, movement of people into areas previously occupied only by animals, and other factors, there is great potential for new zoonotic diseases to appear. Approximately 60 percent or more of emerging infectious diseases in human populations are zoonotic. If you live closer to foxes and raccoons, for instance, the chance of you or your pet catching rabies increases. The wildlife was there first, and because we moved closer to it, problems occur. Increased average global temperatures mean that disease vectors such as ticks, mosquitos, and fleas can expand their range into areas that were previously too cold. For example, Lyme disease is an emerging disease in Canada because of the expanded northward range of ticks.