Leading One Health
Article by: Jessi Behrendsen
Originally Published
Most people don’t think about veterinarians when they pick up a carton of eggs, a gallon of milk or a package of chicken at the grocery store. That’s largely because the system is working.
Behind the scenes, veterinarians are helping producers prevent disease outbreaks, safeguard the food supply, monitor emerging pathogens and ensure the health of animals that sustain agriculture.
At The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine, that work has evolved dramatically over the past decade, expanding far beyond individual animal care into a mission that connects animal, human and environmental health.
Today, the college stands at the forefront of One Health — a collaborative approach recognizing the interconnected health of people, animals, plants and the environment. Through leadership in infectious disease research, food animal medicine, antimicrobial stewardship and public health preparedness, Ohio State veterinarians are helping shape solutions to public health’s and agriculture’s most pressing challenges.
“Veterinarians don’t just work on animal health,” said Greg Habing, DVM, MS, PhD, DACVPM, professor and vice chair of the Department of Veterinary Preventive Medicine. “By proxy, we’re working on human health as well because we’re working on the food supply, and there are zoonotic diseases that are pretty common.”
For Alecia Naugle, DVM ’98, PhD ’03, DACVPM, department chair since January 2025 and a former USDA national animal health leader, that connection is foundational.
Veterinary medicine, from its earliest days, has been a One Health focus,” Naugle said, pointing to early veterinary graduates who fought diseases such as tuberculosis and brucellosis partly because those diseases were sickening and killing people, too.
Preparing Veterinarians for a Changing Food System
The world of food animal medicine looks very different today than it did a generation ago. Production systems have grown increasingly sophisticated, relying on automation and data-driven decisions to manage animal health at scale — even as veterinarians continue serving the small farms and rural communities vital to Ohio agriculture.
“Food animal production systems have certainly been modernized,” Habing said. “They’ve consolidated. The organizations keep growing, and they’ve changed their system much more toward population-level thinking. They use data, technology and robots.”
Naugle, a graduate of Ohio State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, has watched consolidation reshape the industry firsthand. As herds grow and animals move between specialized facilities at different life stages, she said, “the complexity of biosecurity has just increased, and then the consequences of not having good biosecurity have increased, too.”
That shift has transformed the veterinarian’s role. While clinical expertise remains essential, food animal veterinarians today must also understand epidemiology, biosecurity, risk assessment and data analytics.
Building Ohio’s Veterinary Workforce
Like many states, Ohio faces shortages of large-animal and rural practitioners. To address that need, Ohio State is helping lead Protect One Health in Ohio, or Protect OHIO, a statewide initiative that strengthens the veterinary workforce and the state’s preparedness for emerging disease threats.
“Our college received additional funds from the state of Ohio with the goal of producing more rural and large-animal veterinarians,” Habing said. “We’re expanding our class size. We’re doing more outreach to rural areas and to colleges that receive rural students who might want to go to vet school.”
Protect OHIO also supports work on emerging infectious diseases that threaten livestock, wildlife and public health — including those not yet in Ohio. Berrian pointed to the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating fly larva spreading through the southern U.S., as a case study in why that work matters.
“It is not here, but it is definitely something that we are trying to be ahead of,” Berrian said. “It is a disease that does not respect species boundaries.”
“The value of a veterinarian to commercial farms is much more on the prevention side than it is on the individual animal side,” Habing said. “It’s shifted from solely focusing on individual animal care and more toward how we prevent these problems from happening.”
Technology, including artificial intelligence, is accelerating that shift. Amanda Berrian, DVM, PhD, MPH, DACVPM, the Dr. Tom Mack Endowed
Chair in Global One Health, said the college is leaning into a university-wide push for AI fluency to support precision agriculture.
“We’re actively looking for how we support producers by leveraging technology to better detect diseases earlier and optimize productivity in our animals,” Berrian said. “It’s about making sure that we are also maintaining expertise to help fill gaps.”
That preventive mindset has long been a hallmark of Ohio State’s Department of Veterinary Preventive Medicine, the first department of its kind established in the U.S. in 1934, with faculty expertise spanning epidemiology, microbiology, immunology and population medicine.
Leading One Health Research
Ohio State’s influence extends far beyond Ohio’s borders. Faculty from the College of Veterinary Medicine play central leadership roles within Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), one of the nation’s largest interdisciplinary research enterprises focused on infectious diseases and microbial health.
The institute includes more than 190 principal investigators across 11 colleges and the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Research Institute, generating more than $65 million in research expenditures last fiscal year.
In 2025, the college launched the Buckeye Tick Test, a surveillance program that screens ticks for pathogens affecting humans, livestock and companion animals, led in part by Risa Pesapane, PhD, associate professor of veterinary preventive medicine.
Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance
Few challenges illustrate the importance of One Health more clearly than antimicrobial resistance, as bacteria and other microorganisms evolve resistance to antibiotics relied upon in both human and veterinary medicine.
Ohio State has emerged as a global leader in that effort. The University’s Infectious Diseases Institute serves as a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Reference Center for Antimicrobial Resistance — the only such center in North America.
The College of Veterinary Medicine’s own Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, launched in the Veterinary Medical Center in 2018, reflects that commitment locally.
The program trains veterinarians and students to use antimicrobials judiciously, monitors drug-resistant pathogens and shares educational resources with private practices statewide — a reminder that decisions made in clinics, farms and ecosystems alike shape the broader fight against resistance.
Separately, surveillance led by Andrew Bowman, DVM ’07, PhD ’13, DACVPM, professor of veterinary preventive medicine and an international expert
in influenza viruses that affect both animals and people, helped identify white-tailed deer as a reservoir for SARS-CoV-2, offering insight into how pathogens move between wildlife and people.
The college’s contributions also extend through its partnership with The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES), whose Wooster campus is home to research on highly pathogenic avian influenza and other high-consequence animal diseases. There, the Plant and Animal Agrosecurity Research (PAAR) facility — one of only three of its kind nationally — provides the high-containment infrastructure needed to safely study dangerous livestock pathogens and strengthen the nation’s agricultural biosecurity.
Protecting the Food Supply
For consumers, much of this work remains invisible. Veterinarians help producers prevent disease outbreaks, oversee responsible medication use, reduce the risk of zoonotic disease, and ensure that food products meet rigorous safety standards before reaching grocery store shelves.
“Consumers generally don’t need to worry about residues from animal medications—veterinarians and producers have done a good job with residue prevention,” Habing said.
That work extends well beyond the farm.
“You have the luxury of not thinking about it because generally our food is very safe.”
That safety is the product of decades of research, education, surveillance and collaboration among veterinarians, scientists, producers and public health professionals.
As agriculture faces new challenges, Ohio State’s College of Veterinary Medicine continues providing leadership at the intersection of animal health, food security and public health. Most consumers may never see that work.