Laura Kahn

One Health Initiative

Abstract

In her talk, One Health and the Politics of COVID-19, Dr. Kahn unpacks the mysteries of COVID-19’s origins. The One Health concept recognizes the interconnected links among the health of humans, animals, plants, and the environment. By comparing the history, science, and clinical presentations of three different coronaviruses—SARS-CoV-1, MERS, and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)—she uncovers insights with important repercussions for how to prepare and avoid future pandemics. The One Health approach provides a useful framework for examining the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the origins of this pandemic requires investigating the environmental and molecular biological factors that allowed the virus to spread to humans. She examines the biosafety, biosecurity, and bioethics implications of gain-of-function research on pandemic potential pathogens.

Bio

For almost 15 years, Laura H. Kahn, a physician, was a research scholar with the Program on Science and Global Security at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. She is a co-founder of the One Health Initiative, a global movement that promotes the health of all species. She is the author of, Who’s in Charge? Leadership during epidemics, bioterror attacks, and other public health crises, originally published in 2009 by Praeger Security International. In 2020, a second edition was issued with a new preface discussing leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her second book, One Health and the Politics of Antimicrobial Resistance, was published in June 2016 by Johns Hopkins University Press. In 2014, the American Association of Public Health Physicians awarded her with a Presidential Award for Meritorious Service, and in 2016, the American Veterinary One Health Society awarded her with their highest honor, the K.F. Meyer-James H. Steele Gold Head Cane Award, for her work in One Health. One Health and the Politics of Covid-19, her second book in the One Health series, was recently published in October 2024 by Johns Hopkins University press.