2025 AAHA One Health Guidelines: Navigating Cross-Disciplinary Partnerships

Veterinary medicine is centered on the animal patient, and similarly, human medicine is centered on the human patient. Yet animal health, human health, and the environment intersect in myriad ways. Despite this intersection, there are few resources that take a family-centered, collaborative approach to human, animal, and environmental health. To help address this gap, AAHA has brought together a task force of human and veterinary medical professionals with the goal of improving collaboration between professions to facilitate better outcomes for families with pets. These guidelines address common scenarios (e.g., zoonotic disease, disability, intimate partner violence) that intersect with human and animal health and provide strategies for greater communication and collaboration between the professions. The guidelines cover (1) terms and definitions to establish a common language between professions; (2) how to determine if a case requires a One Health approach; (3) how and when to reach out to other professionals for a case (e.g., social worker, physician, other medical professionals); and (4) how and when to follow up and close cases. These guidelines also offer case studies illustrating One Health scenarios that connect with human/family health, with supplemental materials available on the AAHA website at aaha.org/one-health.