One Health
News and guidance on avian influenza is scattered across government and state agency websites, and rampant misinformation is spread across the internet. In response, Cornell has launched a comprehensive resource that offers a one-stop clearinghouse for the most current and trustworthy information on bird flu. A new online Avian Flu Resource Center provides reliable and accessible information for members of the general public, farmers, wildlife professionals, state and public health agency partners, and veterinarians…
Most pandemics in the past century were sparked by a pathogen jumping from animals to humans. This moment of zoonotic spillover is the focus of a multidisciplinary team of researchers led by Raina Plowright, the Rudolf J. and Katharine L. Steffen Professor in the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Public and Ecosystem Health. Their research is one of three projects that make up Cornell’s new Global Grand Challenge: The Future. The three-year challenge from Global Cornell aims to apply advances in our understanding of the social, digital and natural worlds to meet global communities’ emerging needs…
On Feb. 7, New York Governor Kathy Hochul issued an order to temporarily close live bird markets after cases of avian influenza, or bird flu, were detected in seven markets in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx in the past week. The closures apply to all bird markets, including those that didn’t report any cases, in New York City, Westchester, Suffolk, and Nassau counties. The order requires market owners to sell or otherwise remove all live birds and conduct a thorough cleaning and disinfection of their facilities—even if bird flu wasn’t detected there. All markets must remain closed for five days after the cleaning to confirm they are free of the H5N1 bird flu virus so that the virus won’t spread again when live animals are…
In May, Cornell Public Health (CPH) hosted an intensive workshop on Innovations in Improving Human Health for 12 delegates from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), a large federal agency employing hundreds of the top medical researchers in India. Funded by the World Bank, Cornell’s ICMR visitors were interested in learning more about two of Cornell’s signature strengths—applying a One Health approach to advancing human health, and translating academic research to real-world impacts through partnerships and commercialization…
Researchers tested five species of commonly hunted waterfowl in the northeast Atlantic Flyway and, in every sample, found contaminants that could impact the health of the birds, as well as the hunters and others who consume them. The study, published Jan. 15 in Science of the Total Environment and conducted in collaboration with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) and other state agencies, found detectable levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and at least one organochlorine pesticide (OCP) and per- or polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) in each bird sampled…
Smaller fish species are more nutritious, lower in mercury and less susceptible to overfishing, a Cornell-led research team has found. The team’s study was conducted in the Amazon River, but the findings have implications for biodiversity conservation and public health across the globe as large fish species populations are declining worldwide. The study, “Accessible, Low-mercury and Nutritious Fish Provide Win-Wins for Conservation and Public Health,” published Jan. 17 in One Earth. It was authored by four Cornell researchers and colleagues from Brooklyn College and the Wildlife Conservation Society, a nongovernmental organization…
Lauren Singh was interested in tickborne diseases before she applied to Cornell Public Health. “I remember coming across Dr. Goodman’s lab and her work with ticks while researching different public health programs,” she says, “and it immediately caught my attention.” Singh joined the lab this summer and began working on an effort known as the New York State Tick Blitz. Supported by the Northeast Regional Center for Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases (NEVBD) and USDA, the goal of the Tick Blitz is to identify and track the expansion of different tick species throughout the state due to climate change and urbanization…
Bird flu has crept uncomfortably close to home in recent months. Public health experts have detected nearly five dozen known infections of the H5N1 avian influenza virus in people in the U.S. Dairy farmers are approaching a full year of exposure to the virus in their herds. And more than 100 million birds in U.S. poultry farms have been lost to the pathogen or killed in attempts to stop its spread since February 2022. Meanwhile the type of H5N1 virus that has been spreading, known as clade 2.3.4.4b, has also infiltrated ecosystems around the world, wreaking devastation that has mostly gone overlooked…
Faculty from the Department of Public & Ecosystem Health in the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, in partnership with the University of Pretoria in South Africa, have received an NIH P20 grant to establish the Center for Transformative Infectious Disease Research on Climate, Health and Equity in a Changing Environment (C-CHANGE). Climate change is dramatically increasing both the spread of diseases carried by mosquitos and ticks and the risk of new viruses spilling over from animals into people. “To have the greatest health impacts, we must pivot from reactively responding to outbreaks to proactively understanding the social and environmental conditions that increase risk of outbreaks,” says Dr. Alexander Travis…
The first thing farmer Erica Sawatzke does every morning is check on her turkeys. For generations, Sawatzke and her family have run Oakdale Farm in Minnesota. They usually have tens of thousands of turkeys on their farm at a time. But last year, the day before Thanksgiving, when Sawatzke checked on the turkeys, about 40 had died. She walked around the barn, and noticed telltale signs of illness in other turkeys. They were not eating or drinking…
For the first time, scientists have tracked the dispersion of the Oropouche virus in the Brazilian Amazon region, an important first step to control future outbreaks of a disease with more than 100,000 reported cases since the 1960s The researchers followed a new...
Fruit bats generate more diverse antibodies than mice, but overall have a weaker antibody response, according to a new study published September 24th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Dan Crowley from Cornell University, USA, and...