One Health Awareness& Education Campaign – bvmd Germany

Name of the activity: One Health Awareness& Education Campaign

Country/NMO: bvmd Germany

Program: Environment and Health

Contact information: contact [email protected] to get in touch with the Activity Coordinator

Type of the activity: Continuous Activity

Category: Campaign

Focus area: Climate Change, Food Production and Security

Sustainable Development Goals addressed: SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being)

General description:

We aim at better communication and exchange with students from other disciplines (veterinary medicine, pharmacy students, …) with the objective to organize common lectures and other joined activities. Furthermore, we wrote a policy paper on One Health and want to create awareness how climate change problems are linked to other global health crises (e.g. how global warming favors emerging infectious diseases) through advocacy work and (social media) campaigns.

Problem statement:

The well-being of the planet, the whole human mankind, nature, animals and our shared environment is a global concern and not a task for individual disciplines. We need to break down silos, find new interprofessional innovations, transdisciplinary solutions and approachs to save and improve the world we live in – THIS is the thought behind an global ‘One Health’ Concept.  

Target groups:

• General population
• Medical students
• Healthcare Students
• Other Students

Beneficiaries:

• General population
• Medical students
• Healthcare Students
• Other Students

Objectives:

– creating long lasting, collaborative connections to students from other disciplines (veterinary medicine, pharmacy students,..) 

– better communication and exchange with students from other disciplines with the objective to organize common lectures, awareness weeks etc. 

– creating awareness how climate change problems are linked to other global crises e.g. how global warming favors emerging infectious diseases through activities such as demonstrations or common social media campaigns 

– we wrote a policy paper in 2022 on One Health and Planetary Health to highlight the importance of these global concepts and e.g. demand more education through clinical case discussions, panels discussions or interdisciplinary lectures.

– the policy paper is a template for several planned statements, articles and press releases. We want to reach political stakeholders, present them our point of view and give us as students a voice

– planning with the veterinary medical students to edit statements and news articles for important german political stakeholders 

– throughout the year: posting information and education material on social media

Indicators of Success:

Students reached by webinars as well as social media campaigns

Number of students who attend political meetings and join us on demonstrations

Number of medicine universities which may add One Health courses of choice in their curricula

Methodology:

First of all it’s important to find companions for your plans, as such the German NPOs 2021/22 created a group with interested students from different fields to start a long-term collaboration. Our common policy paper has set the base for our teamwork and offers us the opportunity to exchange ideas and get in touch with important national and regional professionals, supporting our students initiative and helping us reach political stakeholders, deans and other important players in this field.

As the last term ended and we as new NPOs started our term, we continued working on this activity. The German NPOs coordinate a group of interested students, who organize regular webinars together with veterinary medicine students from bvvd, attend political meetings to express our views and work on establishing One Health courses in the medical curriculum of the local universities. We will continue working on this topic throughout our term (until October 2023).

Plans for evaluation:

– evaluating the process after some months -> do we still use the policy paper for collective statements or is the whole interdisciplinary group resolving as time goes by?

– evaluation on the outreach effect > how many students can we reach via social media? how many students will visit our online webinars? how many will join us for demonstrations?

External collaborations:

Bundesverband der Veterinärmedizinstudierenden in Deutschland e.V. (bvvd) – shared work on a policy paper, organizing joined webinars and activities