One Health Landscape in Tennessee: Current Status, Challenges, and Priorities

TL;DR

Tennessee is working to connect human, animal, and environmental health through the One Health approach, facing challenges like funding and data sharing.

Contribution

The paper outlines Tennessee’s One Health initiatives, challenges, and strategies for strengthening interdisciplinary collaboration.

Findings

Tennessee’s One Health efforts focus on workforce development, disease surveillance, and climate adaptation.

Barriers include limited funding, undefined roles, and informal data sharing among agencies.

Successful outbreak responses show the effectiveness of coordinated One Health actions.

Abstract

Tennessee’s ecological diversity, spanning forests, farmland, and urban areas, provides an ideal foundation for applying the One Health approach, which integrates human, animal, and environmental health. This review examines Tennessee’s current One Health landscape, highlighting active initiatives, ongoing challenges, and future directions. Key efforts involve workforce development, disease surveillance, outbreak response, environmental conservation, and public education, led by a coalition of state agencies, universities, and the Tennessee One Health Committee. These programs promote cross-sector collaboration to address issues such as zoonotic diseases, climate change, land use shifts, and environmental contaminants. Notably, climate-driven changes, including rising temperatures and altered species distributions, pose increasing threats to health and ecological stability. Tennessee has responded with targeted monitoring programs and climate partnerships. Education is also a priority, with the growing integration of One Health into K–12 and higher education to build a transdisciplinary workforce. However, the state faces barriers, including limited funding for the One Health workforce, undefined workforce roles, and informal inter-agency data sharing. Despite these obstacles, Tennessee’s successful responses to outbreaks like avian influenza and rabies demonstrate the power of coordinated action. To strengthen its One Health strategy, the state must expand funding, formalize roles, improve data systems, and enhance biodiversity and climate resilience efforts positioning itself as a national leader in interdisciplinary collaborative solutions.