Rx One Health 2025

Rx One Health Field Institute provides two weeks of hands-on learning across California’s wild landscapes and inspires participants to apply newly gained skills in their home communities across the globe.

As bats flew in a darkening sky and the resident barn owl began to stir for her evening hunt, a group of 25 people from around the world  gathered under the rafters of a 120-year-old barn on the edge of Plumas National Forest. They sat in a hodgepodge circle of folding and camp chairs to share their favorite moments of the past two weeks of the Rx One Health Field Institute (RxOH).

Representing a wide range of One Health fields from 13 countries, they had come to UC Davis to join the 8th year of the program for two immersive weeks of experiential learning across California’s coast and mountains. From career paths in public health, veterinary medicine, environmental science, social science, animal science, geography, and more, this year’s cohort of graduate students and early career professionals shared the same mission: tackle health challenges at the human-animal-environment interface.

Participants gained hands-on experience, practiced crosssector collaboration, and built leadership and emergency response skills through real-world scenarios. Along the way, they formed lifelong friendships, shared s’mores under the stars, and left with a renewed purpose to advance One Health in their own communities around the world.

Among their key takeaways during the last evening of sharing were: heightened curiosity; an increase in professional and personal confidence; feeling empowered to explore, ask questions and gain more knowledge; better clarity for future career paths; shared friendship and camaraderie; and learning how to pitch a tent for the first time!

“I love seeing the professional and personal growth of each team member during RxOne Health Field Institute,” said Associate Dean Woutrina Smith, DVM '01, MPVM '01, Ph.D. '04, a faculty lead for the field institute. “They try on different leadership styles and discover aspects of themselves and their colleagues that can be truly transformational.”

The RxOH curriculum was built on the legacy of a course called Envirovet Summer Institute, co-led by UC Davis and offered from 1991 to 2010. When researchers at the school realized Envirovet would sunset, they worked to develop a new program and held the first RxOH Field Institute in 2017. Since then, the program has welcomed more than 185 participants from 39 countries, representing a range of academic backgrounds and experiences.

“A major difference with RxOH is that it is designed to attract all disciplines, not just veterinarians and DVM students,” said Jennie Lane, DVM, MPH who has been instrumental in the program’s design and planning since its inception. “Not only do participants bring a wide range of life experiences from countries like Kenya, India, Peru and the Netherlands, but they come from different career paths that intersect with the One Health approach. Diverse perspectives are essential to conducting good science as well as to reducing biases and assumptions in critical thinking.”

Developing key skills 

RxOH is led by senior faculty and staff from the One Health Institute at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and the UC Davis School of Medicine. The program partners with non-governmental health and agriculture organizations and small-business enterprises working in communities where the program is taught. Recruited instructors and facilitators are experts in their field who are passionate about their subjects and provide high-quality learning experiences.

Participants develop hands-on skills in laboratory and research methods, ecosystem dynamics, biodiversity conservation, epidemiology, infectious disease surveillance, biosafety, biosecurity, food safety, agriculture, food security, hydrology, marine ecology, communications, community and stakeholder engagement, ethics, teamwork, and leadership.

The first week of the 2025 field institute began in Santa Cruz, with sessions on biodiversity conservation, land-to-sea pathogen transmission, sea otters as health sentinels, and healthy watershed restoration. Days were filled with classes and field trips, and topped off with unique experiences like tide pooling, a boat ride through Elkhorn Slough, first-time roller-coaster rides, a surprise visit to a private fossil collection, and discovering banana slugs beneath shady redwood groves. They also had the opportunity to participate in necropsy sessions led by Melissa Miller, DVM ’94, Ph.D. ‘02 and her team at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center.

Mid-program, the group traveled from Santa Cruz to Davis for a quick stop before heading to the Sierra Nevada. In Davis, the group had an opportunity to practice safely donning and doffing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the always popular PPE Olympics activity and spent a morning practicing the Incident Command System with the California Veterinary Emergency Team. They enjoyed a scenic evening watching the bat fly-out at Yolo Bypass before leaving the following day for a picnic lunch on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, followed by a visit to the Tahoe Environmental Research Center to learn about the Tahoe Basin. From Tahoe, they traveled to the northern Sierra Nevada for five nights of camping at Clover Valley Ranch.

At the ranch, participants joined natural resources professional Terri Rust for a morning plant walk that deepened the group's understanding of local ecology, flora, and traditional plant uses. In 2021, the Dixie fire, which burned more than one million acres over the course of months, burned approximately 30% of the ranch property. She pointed out ways in which the scarred landscape was recovering and how fire as a natural form of disturbance plays a part in meadow restoration.

Over the course of two days, participants practiced safely conducting hantavirus disease surveillance on deer mice. They took evening walks through the meadow to follow the meandering Red Clover Creek and learn about beaver dam analogs. These human-made structures are crafted from willow to mimic beaver dams so researchers can study how well they filter pathogens like Giardia from the water flow. UC Davis graduate student Ariel Loredo, DVM '16, MPVM '18, Ph.D. '25 has published research that shows they can remove more than 80% of this harmful pathogen, thereby enhancing the wet meadow ecosystem for seasonal grazing cattle as well as resident wildlife.

Local wildlife in Clover Valley include sandhill cranes whose honks and calls rang across the valley in the early morning, replacing any need for a phone alarm. Elk and bear left large footprints in spongy areas near the creek. Coyotes often provided late night serenades—the first time many participants had heard their yips and howls.

The final two days were dedicated to a capstone project, a collaborative effort that drew on each participant’s unique talents and knowledge. Through a custom designed tabletop exercise, participants adopted individual character personas and worked through a hypothetical zoonotic disease outbreak in Plumas County. Designed to mirror real-world challenges, the exercise brought together diverse stakeholders and required participants to apply leadership, communication, and technical skills.

The outbreak unfolded with reports of unusual illness in livestock, wildlife, and local residents. In response, participants assumed the roles of county public health officials, state veterinarians, wildlife biologists, tribal representatives, local clinicians, agricultural producers, community leaders, and federal partners. Together, they navigated the complexities of surveillance, diagnostics, risk communication, and resource allocation. The simulation emphasized the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health, while also highlighting jurisdictional challenges and the importance of community trust.

“The wonderful thing about the One Health approach is that it works no matter where you are,” said Brian Bird, Ph.D. '08, DVM '09, one of the program’s faculty instructors and mentors. “In RxOH, the participants learn how to implement One Health as a team, and I’ve seen them leave the program with renewed commitment and a sense of hope to use these global perspectives to help tackle health issues in their own communities and home countries.”

See more images from RxOH over the years.