A capstone project is a final project in which graduate students choose a real-world topic or problem and use the knowledge and skills they have acquired throughout their academic career to address it.
Most of the time, these projects include presentations that are presented for a final grade, but are then lost to the world after graduation. Being able to present an overview to a wider audience in the form of a publication to address a real-world topic or problem can be a huge step forward for a student’s career.
Recent Medical College of Georgia Elena Diller, MD, a graduate of Augusta University, based her capstone project for her graduate certificate in bioethics on One Health for Pandemic Prevention, and it was published in the June issue of Journal of Inquiry into Bioethics.
Diller worked with Laura WilliamsonPhD, director of Center for Bioethics and Health Policy within the Institute of Public and Preventive Health in the proposed School of Public Health at the AU.
Diller and Williamson’s published article, “Supporting One Health for Pandemic Prevention: The Need for Ethical Innovation,” examines the importance of finding a way to balance human life and rights, the lives and rights of non-human animals. humans and environmental life.
“My capstone project was underway One health, which is becoming a trendy term or philosophy regarding how we can essentially merge multiple disciplines and their philosophies and attitudes toward health. These disciplines being veterinary medicine, environmental health, public health and even individual health. In the past, all of this was essentially siloed and humans very rarely looked at how all of these different disciplines interact together in the real world. One Health aims to approach topics like public health from a more interdisciplinary perspective that can benefit humans, but also really addresses concerns about environmental and animal health,” Diller said.
“It’s basically recognizing how everything is connected, and we want to use a multidisciplinary approach to solving problems, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and that one person or one expert doesn’t have everything the answers or all the information needed to resolve these issues. We understand that our practices, particularly in the health sector, when it comes to for example waste management or deforestation and interaction with our environment, we understand that they have enormous consequences on health .
THE Centers for Disaster Control and Prevention defines One Health as “a collaborative, multi-sectoral, transdisciplinary approach – working at local, regional, national and global levels – with the aim of achieving optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnectedness between people, animals, plants and their common environment”.
Diller, who received the Excellence in Bioethics Award from the Center for Bioethics and Health Policy, points out that the COVID-19 pandemic, consisting of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is the third zoonotic coronavirus to appear in the world . the last decade. The other two include Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
“One of the things that really inspired the article was the COVID-19 pandemic and the idea that it was probably a zoonotic disease that created a pandemic that killed millions of people,” Diller said. “The majority of all emerging infectious diseases that threaten human life are zoonoses. If we can better understand how our interactions with the environment and animals contribute to our health consequences, but also to the meaning of animal loss and the loss of environmental resources. The hope is that we’re able to, I think, approach these issues more collaboratively and predict them so that maybe we can prevent the next pandemic.
“An example I can give is that in Denmark they killed thousands of mink that they thought were infected with COVID or likely to be infected, and it turned out that was not the case” , continued Diller. “There was just a potential for an outbreak, and so there are these mass killings of animals that humans have done as a preventative measure to prevent the spread of disease, and that’s just one example of how of which we have prioritized human health over animals and disease. Environmental health. To protect the public interest in sustainability, we must stop prioritizing what we as individuals , believe it is good for human health, even if it is difficult.
While human and public health are at the forefront of many health decisions, the field of bioethics has a role to play in how health policies and practices can and should innovate to prevent and respond to disease. zoonotic diseases that could lead to epidemics and pandemics. This involves striking a delicate balance between the benefits and risks of individual choice and responsibility to society.
One Health is a strategy to promote a better balance between human, animal and environmental health. Although it is understood that these three elements are interrelated, human nature always causes an imbalance in the way we approach the topics and issues that arise, usually to the detriment of animal and environmental health. This imbalance threatens the well-being of all, and until humans begin to think more holistically, this trend will continue to be dangerous.
“I am delighted that Dr. Diller has chosen this important research topic; It’s always been great to work with her. One Health is an approach to global public health that recognizes the interrelationship between animal, human and environmental interests and emphasizes that they can support or harm each other,” Williamson said.
“Historically, infectious disease outbreaks often originated from pathogens jumping from animals to humans. If we want to tackle the fundamental problems that cause pandemics, one of the issues we need to look at is how we treat animals. Even though the One Health approach is attracting growing interest, ethical dimensions remain under research and are rarely sufficiently integrated into traditional work.
“We argue in the paper that greater attention needs to be given to ethical culture within One Health and, more generally, in global public health. Too often, health ethics remains linked to the four principles approach, which does not do justice to contemporary ethical challenges, particularly in public health. I hope that our new School of Public Health can pay more attention to this issue and help produce research and education programs rooted in an ethical vision that is fit for purpose.
Earlier this year, Diller was a guest editor for the April edition of American Medical Association Journal of Ethicsfocused on meat production and consumption and their effects on human health.
Diller, a native of Rome, Ga., graduated from MCG in May and has now begun a residency in internal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
“There are 7 billion people on this planet, so every action is amplified to the nth degree because there are so many humans on this planet. I think to have any chance of saving the planet we need to demonstrate some self-restraint and concern for the common good, and I think that’s where One Health comes in. There is this dialogue between experts in each field. so that ideally you can come to a solution that takes into account everyone’s interests, but there will always be wins, losses and compromises,” Diller said.
“I think One Health can help us have the tools to bring our conversation to a more equitable level, where we can have conversations that show concern for both humans, animals and the environment, because, ultimately, our interest is intrinsically linked to interest. animals and environmental health, because it is the resources we depend on and interact with that can make us sick or even be the source of our health.
4
