Nov. 22, 2024
Words by Jens Odegaard. Photos courtesy of Dr. Brianna Beechler

On Nov. 15, a person with ties to a poultry farm in Clackamas County became Oregon’s first human confirmed infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1 bird flu), according to the Oregon Health Authority. The closely monitored virus is devastating domestic and wild bird flocks across the United States and can infect and transmit to other species, including humans, swine, horses, dogs and bats. 

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, “direct infection can occur from exposure to saliva, mucous or feces from infected birds” and more rarely through an intermediate host like another animal. 

The spread of bird flu marks the latest example of the interconnectedness of animal, human and environmental health, collectively known as One Health.

Though it may seem obvious that health is interconnected, it’s not always taught or recognized as such.

Which is where Dr. Brianna "Bree" Beechler comes in. 

Pictured: During a One Health study abroad trip led by Dr. Beechler, students walk to the river in Kruger National Park in South Africa to collect samples for a schistosomiasis study. Schistosomes are parasitic flatworms that cause the disease, which infects people in the urinary tract or the intestines.

The One Health Aha! 

The spread of bird flu through environments and across species is exactly the type of case study that could find its way into Beechler’s One Health in Practice undergraduate capstone course at Oregon State University. 

Beechler, an assistant professor of One Health in the Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Sciences, has been teaching the course for about five years. It’s open to students from across majors at Oregon State University.

“It’s a project-based class where the students work together. I present them with a theoretical health problem: Like there's an outbreak of a vector-borne disease in Florida, create communications and work together to solve this problem,” Beechler said. “I put them in groups where they don't match … so, I put people with pre-med with people with pre-vet with people in engineering. That's the whole idea.” 

From her experience teaching this course as well as courses for the Master of Public Health program which focuses on human health, Beechler noticed a stark contrast.  

When she’d ask veterinary focused students if they’d heard of One Health “almost 100% of them every year would say, 'of course,’” she said. But when she’d ask the same question to students focused on the human side of public health, the affirmative response was more like 30%.

The idea to create an undergraduate certificate in One Health came out of this observation. “It's not truly One Health if it's really just veterinarians promoting it with a few environmental scientists,” she said. “I think it is important that people have a connecting framing in their head, because it's not obvious to everyone that we should be working together.” 

Certified in One Health 

Beechler holds a doctorate in disease ecology, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and an undergraduate teaching degree, making her uniquely qualified to tie the One Health threads together in an academic setting. 

Together with colleagues in the Department of Biomedical Sciences (special shout-out to Dr. Luiz Bermudez, Dr. Holly Arnold and Justin Sanders, Ph.D.), Beechler built out a full 27 credit One Health Undergraduate Certificate that she’s coordinating. It launched this fall. 

 “The idea is to bring this into the curriculum at the undergrad level where students don't really know what they're going to do yet. You know, their first year, second year, they're 18, 19,” she said. “If you start talking about it then, then you spread that idea out further because those students will end up in different fields as they move on. And then they will have all heard of One Health and thought about why collaboration across disciplinary boundaries is so important for health objectives.”

The certificate consists of three required core courses that total nine credits: 

  • Three credits. The aforementioned One Health in Practice capstone.
  • Four credits. “A capstone internship experience or a research project that's One Health related,” Beechler said. “They can do that in any field they're interested in. So, for instance, a student that's interested in becoming a doctor might do a very different internship than a student who wants to be a veterinarian, or a different research project.
  • Two credits. A seminar course that is “meant to get them out of their area,” Beechler said. “They go to seminars outside of their major around the university and submit summaries to me.”

The remaining 18 credits can be chosen from a wide variety of courses from the categories of Environmental Health, Human Health and Animal Health with a minimum of one course from each. “It’s really just about promoting interdisciplinary work” across the health fields, Beechler said.

She is doing a soft rollout with four students enrolled so far. “This year is supposed to be the ramp-up year where it's slow, where I figure everything out, like how to use the computer systems I now have to learn,” Beechler said with a laugh. The hope is then to grow the program to have roughly 50 students spread out over their four undergraduate years.

Students from OSU conduct One Health related research with Dr. Beechler on a trip to Costa Rica. Here they are isolating environmental bacteria to evaluate for antibiotic resistance.

Dr. Beechler holding a sedated bighorn sheep during a capture in southeast Oregon. These captures are conducted by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to monitor the health of bighorn populations.

During a One Health study abroad trip led by Dr. Beechler, students from OSU joined students from the Netherlands and South Africa to learn about one health in Kruger National Park, in collaboration with Nsasani Trust.

One Health Direction

It was Beechler’s own exposure to research in undergrad that sent her down the path she’s on today. “I happened to study abroad in my fourth year of undergrad, and I did an ecology school for field studies program in Kenya. That was very influential. I got to do a research project and it was obviously very ecology oriented, and I loved it.” 

After graduating with her teaching degree, she taught at a middle school outdoor school for a year. “It was eye-opening, but not something that was going to be my career,” she laughed. “So, then I went back to my original childhood dreams of going to vet school. Beechler intended to pursue a career in small animal medicine, but during veterinary school she fell in love with research. She decided to combine it all together by pursuing her doctorate in disease ecology after finishing her DVM.   

“I really like thinking about things in a larger way,” Beechler said. “So, I like thinking about how things are connected and how different people can work together to solve complex problems.”

For questions about the certificate, please visit the certificate web page or reach out to Dr. Brianna Beechler via email. 

You can also learn more about an additional One Health Summer Research Program that brings together undergraduates, graduate students and students in veterinary and medical school.