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The Next Generation One Health Philippines (NGOHP) Fellowship has made its One Health online course available on its website. The online course comprises six modules and is meant to be completed asynchronously, each tackling different perspectives on One Health ranging from the ecological links between wildlife and pandemics to the role of the social sciences.

This course was initially made available to the fifteen fellows who are a part of the NGOHP Fellowship Program. The NGOHP is a flagship project of the Planetary and Global Health Program (PGHP) of the St. Luke’s Medical Center College of Medicine – William H. Quasha Memorial (SLMCCM-WHQM) with support from the International Alliance Against Health Risks in Wildlife Trade. The fellowship aims to enhance the domestic capacity of the Philippines for One Health transdisciplinary research and knowledge translation to effectively address wildlife trade and biodiversity loss as drivers of infectious disease emergence.

The fellowship began with a six-week online introductory course to One Health, an approach that aims to balance the health of people, animals, and the environment. Hosted on the St. Luke’s Electronic Platform for ubiquitous Pedagogy (StEP-uP), SLMCCM-WHQM’s online learning management system, the online course contains six modules with lectures and interviews from experts in different fields from around the world, and is supplemented by readings and videos to further enrich the learning experience. The design of the course ensures that learners are able to expand their understanding of One Health beyond their own disciplines.

The modules found in the online course are as follows:

Module 1: Fundamentals of One Health
Module 2: Wildlife, Emerging Diseases, and One Health
Module 3: One Health Research and Action
Module 4: Social Science and Humanities Perspectives for One Health
Module 5: One Health Governance, Policy, and Economics
Module 6: Leadership for One Health

The modules for the online One Health introductory course can now be accessed from the NGOHP website

Initially, the online course was made available to the fifteen fellows of the NGOHP fellowship.  Having received favorable feedback from its participants, the course is now uploaded to the website for all learners from across the Philippines.

“For me, the new idea that I learned from the course is that the One Health approach challenges anthropocentrism – that it’s only human beings that matter,” said Ryan Pascual, an NGOHP fellow and a science research specialist working in the Department of Science and Technology. “One Health also points out the ills brought by the excesses of human activities and rejects the idea that man is superior to all creation.”

Von Dela Torre, another fellow and an instructor at the University of the Philippines – Mindanao, shared this opinion. “One Health is not only designed to address zoonoses and pandemics. It also answers other pressing problems through the lens of sociology, psychology, virology, ecology, anthropology, biology, etc. One Health is a unique, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approach in providing holistic solutions to animal, environmental, and human health problems.”

Through the public release of the online modules, the NGOHP aims to spread awareness and knowledge of One Health among all Filipinos. By introducing One Health from multiple perspectives, the online course also serves to inspire learners to contribute to the One Health approach from their own fields and become equipped in navigating transdisciplinary spaces to prevent the next pandemic.