Human, animal and environmental health are closely interrelated. The aim of this UE is to train future healthcare professionals in a global, interdisciplinary approach to health, taking account of these complex interactions.

Objectives

At the end of this course, students will have developed cross-disciplinary knowledge of the causes and consequences of the environment-health link. They will have worked with students from other teaching streams and identified the semantic differences of common terms depending on the context in which they are used.

Example theoretical elements covered

• Common bases
  • What is sustainable development in human or animal healthcare?
  • Introduction to ecology and biodiversity from a global change perspective
• Problem identification:
  • relating human health, livestock health, agri-food management: monitoring epidemics: avian flu/human flu; use of antibiotics on farms and antibiotic resistance; farm effluents (dust, metabolites, ammonia/nitrogen/phosphorus => green tides, ...); Phytosanitary products: influence on biodiversity, residues in food.
  • Health and ecosystems: origin of zoonoses, freshwater management: infiltration/runoff zones; use of animal products in medicine: e.g. krill and omega-3, complicating the process. krill and omega-3, dietary supplements and xenobiotics, Fetal Calf Serum,...
• Natural environment and human health
  • Biodiversity and health: Dependence on altered atmospheric conditions: temperature, hygrometry, fine particles; Psyche and environmental quality; Maintenance of renewable resources / nutrition / quality of food produced / fished / hunted; Atmospheric conditions and health; Limiting conditions for human life: temperatures - humidity / "non-viable" geographical areas; Fine particles, NOx, SOx, O3
  • Water quality and health: xenobiotics and PBT classification; heavy metals; microplastics (influence microplastics metabolism / enrichment endocrine disruptors; origin of microplastics and the link with health care activity; influence on the food chain, food contamination; Alteration biodiversity (dead marine organisms); cross-cutting issue / leadership communication
  • Dietary: North-South comparative malnutrition / Lancet eat health plate; deficiencies, fat imbalance
  • Living environment: Noise, UV radiation, sleep cycle - screens
• Legislation: Temperatures and labor law; Notions of obligation of means and loss of chance; Medical ethics and the environment
• Bioethics: Historical origins; Deontological ethics - sociological evolution of dignity (human > living); Ethical issues relating to the beginning and end of life
• Political science and health: Climate wars, migrations; Emerging and re-emerging diseases
• Collaboration and prevention: UN bodies: WHO - FAO - UNESCO
• Practice of research, pharmaceutical sciences, human and veterinary medicine and the environment: individualization of drug dosages, iatrogenia, antibiotic therapy management, hospital management and leadership, influence of care (human and animal medicine, pharma industry and medical technology, hospital as community) on the environment: special cases (halogenated gases, nitrous oxide, carbon balance of techniques, xenobiotics, antibiotic resistance, digital pollution, medical waste pathways, radioisotopes,..)

Teaching methods

• ex cathedra in auditorium
• active pedagogy by development of a research question

Assessment method

The student is asked to produce a document (poster, text, short video) that identifies the causes and consequences of an altered environment on health, based on a research question. He/she must use collaborative intelligence to take advantage of the skills of the members of his/her group. He/she identifies the elements of the research question for which experimental data or scientific reflection is available in the literature. He identifies any factoids and ideological elements, makes them explicit and corrects them.

The student will present the fruit of his research work at the closing day of the JEDDT. This work will be based on scientific articles and according to the scientific method. A public presentation will be made: in a conventional way as a poster or on the model my thesis in 120 seconds. Or freely in the form of a short video or artistic presentation accompanied by an explanation.

More info in the training directory coming soon.