The recent COVID-19 pandemic and the monkeypox global outbreak among other health threats point to the spread of diseases from animals to humans in an ever-increasing fragile environment. All these are a call to action to further develop and apply One Health at local, national, regional, and international levels. As we prepare for what the future brings in an increasingly interconnected world, communication, sharing knowledge and concerted collaborative action by partners working at the human, animal and environmental levels is key in mitigating these threats.

We at ISID recognize that the One health approach is key as one of our signature programs, ProMED is one of the only emerging disease surveillance networks that covers humans, animals, and plants as well as their interactions. ProMED was launched in 1994 as an Internet service to identify unusual health events related to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and toxins affecting humans, animals, and plants. ProMED is the largest publicly available system conducting global reporting of infectious disease outbreaks. It is an essential source of information used daily by international public health leaders, government officials, physicians, veterinarians, researchers, private companies, journalists, and the general public, providing timely reporting of important emerging pathogens and their vectors using a One Health approach. Reports are produced and commentary provided by a multidisciplinary global team of subject matter expert (SME) Moderators in a variety of fields including virology, parasitology, epidemiology, entomology, veterinary and plant diseases. ProMED operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and has subscribers in almost every country in the world.

ISID also holds the International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance (IMED) every other year. Leading scientists, clinicians, policy makers, veterinarians, and ecologists come together to share breakthroughs in the emerging diseases community. Discussions on how to detect, monitor, understand, prevent, and respond to outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and toxic exposures across all species and regions of the world take place. This meeting embodies the One Health model of emerging diseases, recognizing the commonality of human, environmental, and animal health. At this meeting, diverse and world-renowned colleagues come together biennially to present new knowledge and breakthroughs on how to discover, detect, understand, prevent, and respond to outbreaks of global emerging threats.

Also on One Health Day 2022, the Society is pleased to announce the latest addition to its family of journals (IJID and IJID Regions), IJID One health coming soon in 2023. IJID One Health traverses human, animal, and environmental health, covering the domains of diagnoses/diagnostics, surveillance, epidemiology, public health capacities and interventions.

As we commemorate this day, we must remember that the One Health approach is necessary to identify, prevent and control ever increasing health threats, rapidly and effectively.