WHO WE ARE
Louisiana One Health In Action is a nonprofit, LLC and 501(c)(3). LOHA started as a result of a family's 2.5 year search for answers to their son's mysterious illness after being scratched by a stray kitten. He is now receiving treatment and is finally recovering from a chronic Bartonella infection. His mother says, “more has to be done to help people. It is utterly heartbreaking to watch your child’s life slip away with no one to help you. We saw over 30 doctors and had multiple misdiagnoses. We needed a doctor that could help our son, and not one was educated on how to effectively diagnose and treat a chronic Bartonella infection. It is imperative that we develop a different approach in the medical community, because not everyone that becomes ill has the same host response to these pathogens, which make it easy to mistake for other diagnoses.” Finally their son was successfully diagnosed through a collaborative effort between a Veterinary Internist (Dr Ed Breitschwerdt) and a Physician Scientist (Dr Bob Mozayeni)- using a true One Health approach that saved his life. Their son is now under the care of Dr. Mozayeni- Founder and General Medical Director of the Translational Medicine Group in Bethesda, MD. an expert in Internal Medicine, Rheumatology, and Vascular Inflammatory Diseases.
Today, with their son fully recovered after four years of treatment, this family is committed to helping others avoid the frustration, heartbreak, and huge financial burden that ensues as a result of a journey like this. The family is dedicated to bringing about change using the One Health concept and approach.
WHAT WE DO
We seek to provide opportunities and highlight endeavors that put the One Health Initiative into action so as to raise public awareness and foster a collaborative mindset and openness among human, animal, and environmental health professions. We also will help provide and organize opportunities allowing medical professionals and other One Health advocates to further the initiative and involve local communities. All proceeds will go to raising awareness and supporting One Health issues, advancing research, and/or improving testing and treatments.
One Health Commission defines One Health as “a collaborative, multisectoral, and trans-disciplinary approach - working at local, regional, national, and global levels - to achieve optimal health and well-being outcomes recognizing the interconnections between people, animals, plants and their shared environment.
Rationale for the One Health Approach:
-
Planetary Environmental health may affect human and animal health through contamination, pollution and changing climate conditions that may lead to emergence of new infectious agents.
-
Worldwide, nearly 75 percent of all emerging human infectious diseases in the past three decades originated in animals.
-
The world population is projected to grow from 7 billion in 2011 to 9 billion by 2050.
-
To provide adequate healthcare, food and water for the growing global population, the health professions, and their related disciplines and institutions, must work together.
-
Human-animal interactions / bonds can beneficially impact the health of both people and animals.”
OneHealthInitiative.com defines a One Health approach as "a movement to forge co-equal, all inclusive collaborations between physicians, osteopathic physicians, veterinarians, dentists, nurses and other scientific-health and environmentally related disciplines, including the American Medical Association, American Veterinary Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Nurses Association, American Association of Public Health Physicians, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the U.S. National Environmental Health Association (NEHA). Additionally, more than 900 prominent scientists, physicians and veterinarians worldwide have endorsed the initiative.
​
Learn more about One Health
