Ali S. Khan, MD, MPH — CDC, National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-borne, and Enteric Diseases
"Studying the interaction between animals, humans and the environment is a one-health approach that is critical to improving human health and tackling future health threats," says Ali Khan. "Diseases don't stay still - they are always innovating and our environment is continuously changing. We cannot be satisfied with science as it is. We need research to innovate just as the bugs are innovating."
"If you think about HIV, it was originally a zoonotic, or animal-borne, disease. The same is true of SARS and H1N1. West Nile is brought over by a mosquito. We need to work across disciplines and fields to better understand and protect ourselves from new and emerging infectious diseases." This is part of the one-health approach Ali Khan, MD, MPH knows is essential to protecting our health.
"When public health is invisible, it means we've done our job successfully. Typically, the only time it is visible is when something new arises or when something has gone wrong. However, we put public health research into practice every day, before we even get to work. We wake up and brush our teeth with fluoridated water. We drive to work with seat belts on safe roads. While you might not recognize it, the fact is no one can get away from public health!"
As Khan reminds us, we have many public health success stories: public health research helped develop bed nets to protect our children from malaria and through the work of the CDC, malaria was eliminated from the US in the 1940s. These strategies are now being implemented globally. We are well on our way to eradication of guinea worm, thanks to the public health research that identified and implemented simple interventions like filtering the harmful organism out of drinking water.
"We continue to develop public health strategies to protect our nation's health. More recently, research at CDC has given us PulseNet, a DNA "fingerprint" typing system. This tool helps detect outbreaks faster and track them better. Someone gets sick with the intestinal bacteria such as E.coli, that case gets fingerprinted and entered into a database that alerts us to fingerprint matches. We start connecting the dots and can take quick action, such as a food recall to prevent further disease spread or illness."
Looking ahead, Khan hopes we can re-connect individual health with public health, the one-health approach that brings prevention back into health care. "We should be working with physicians and public health practitioners to ensure that we are all thinking more broadly about our community's. For example, when we treat an individual for diabetes, we should also be asking how this person got diabetes, what the implications are for our communities and our health care system.
"While it is hard to invest in something that is often invisible like public health is, we cannot do our work without research. There are a number of diseases that need public health strategies. There are always new challenges and emerging diseases that require us to stay on our toes. We cannot let our science lapse.