This is a transcript of the Spur of the Moment episode “The intersection of humans, plants, animals, and disease with Captain Casey Barton Behravesh.” It is provided as a courtesy and may contain errors.

Casey Barton Behravesh: One Health is all about the close connection between the health of people, animals, plants and our shared environment.

Jocelyn Hittle: Hello and welcome to CSU Spur of the Moment, the podcast of Colorado State University’s Spur campus in Denver, Colorado.

Casey Barton Behravesh: And I thought, wow, this is so disturbing yet so cool. And I need to figure out what is going on with this? Where do these worms come from? And that opened up a whole can of worms literally for me.

Jocelyn Hittle: On this podcast, we talk with experts in food, water and health and learn about their current work and their professional journeys. Today I’m joined by Captain Casey Barton Behravesh with the Centers for Disease Control or CDC. Captain Barton Behravesh is a captain in the U.S. Public Health Service and is director of CDCs one Health Office, which resides in the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Captain Barton Behravesh has a master’s in veterinary parasitology, a doctor of veterinary medicine degree from Texas A&M and Doctor of Public Health degree from the University of Texas. She trained in the Epidemic Intelligent Service, is a diplomat of the American College of Veterinary Preventative Medicine and has been the recipient of numerous awards. We are thrilled to have Captain Barton Bees here today to discuss her current work, her professional journey and what she sees on the horizon for One Health. Welcome Captain Barton Behravesh.

Casey Barton Behravesh: Thanks, it’s great to be here.

Jocelyn Hittle: So I was hoping we could start with some of the basics because your title director of the One Health Office at the CDC includes a term that many might not know. Can you tell us a little bit about what One Health means?

Casey Barton Behravesh: Sure, One Health is all about the close connection between the health of people, animals, plants and our shared environment. And actually partners across the United States government got together to define One Health as the collaborative effort of multiple disciplines and sectors, working together with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes, recognizing that interconnection between people, animals, plants and our shared environment. And One Health applies to the local level, the national level, the regional level, and the global level as well.

Jocelyn Hittle: Thank you, so the intersection of human health, animal health and our shared environment is really the space that you are focused on when we talk about One Health, that’s really what you’re referring to. Could you expand on that and tell us a little bit about the One Health Office itself? What is a day in the life for you or a week in the life for you in the office and particularly for your position as director?

Casey Barton Behravesh: So One Health is not new, but it’s become more important in recent years. And this is because there are many factors that have changed interactions between people, animals, plants and our environment. The COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example of a One Health issue that’s impacted the entire world. We know that people are living closer together, human populations are growing and expanding into new geographic areas. As a result, more people live in close contact with both wild and domestic animals, whether livestock or pets. And the Earth is experiencing changes in climate and land use like deforestation and intensive farming practices. And these disruptions and environmental conditions and habitats can provide new opportunities for diseases to pass to animals. We also have more global travel and trade and the movement of both people, animals, plants and animal and plant products has increased from this international trading travel. And as a result, diseases can spread quickly across borders and around the globe. And also it’s important to note that animals are more than just food. They play an important role in our lives, whether for food, fiber, livelihoods, travel, sport, education or even companionship. I’ve definitely got a number of pets in my home. And close contact with animals and their environments can provide opportunities for diseases to pass between animals and people. And these factors make it easier for zoonotic and emerging infectious diseases to spread between animals and people. And unfortunately every year, millions of people and animals around the world are impacted by these zoonotic diseases that they share. I’m also proud to say that CDC was the first federal agency to establish a One Health office. We were set up in 2009 and we have the big focus on working to protect the health of people, animals, and our shared environment in both the U.S. and around the world. And we work with a number of One Health partners, both in government and non-government partners with industry and academic partners and others to best achieve these optimal health outcomes for all. And as I mentioned, the COVID-19 pandemic really put the spotlight on One Health. And our office has a a big focus right now on tackling both endemic our long known zoonotic diseases as well as emerging zoonotic diseases. And we are focused in on One Health efforts for pan respiratory disease surveillance and building those connections across sectors to better and faster detect pathogens that might cause the next outbreak or epidemic or even pandemic. We also are focused in on global health security and strengthening our One Health coordination in the United States as well as some of our key focus areas.

Jocelyn Hittle: Thanks, I wonder if you could expand a little on, as you’re describing what you’re, what you’re focusing on right now. You mentioned a variety of different partnerships with other sectors. I wonder if you might expand on that a little bit. Who are you partnering with? What are some of the important roles that other disciplines are playing as you look at at One Health issues, particularly as it relates to the pandemic?

Casey Barton Behravesh: Sure, so we of course have a number of partnerships with federal agency partners on both domestic and global One Health issues. For example, we work very closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Interior and the agencies that fall under both of those umbrellas to tackle a number of one health issues with a big focus on zoonotic diseases right now. We actually, back in 2017 worked together on a historic workshop where we brought a number of interagency partners and state partners together to prioritize our top zoonotic diseases of greatest national concern in the United States and identified some areas where we hope to expand upon our One Health collaborations. And back in December of 2017, we prioritized eight different zoonotic diseases. Zoonotic, influenza, Salmon Alosis, West Nile Virus Plague, and number five on our list long before the COVID-19 pandemic was emerging. Corona viruses was just helps to highlight the power of one health discussions. And then we also had rabies Brucellosis in in Lyme disease to round off those top eight diseases. And having these important federal partnerships and you know, building this trust and transparency in setting joint priorities and identifying gaps has been a really important foundation for us in One Health. And we’re actually working with those partners now based on and ask from Congress where CDC works with inter agency partners to develop a national One Health framework as well as formalizing a One Health coordination structure for the United States. So we’re very excited about that. We’re working with our inner agency partners now and making a lot of progress and hoping to launch early in the the new year. We also work with our state tribal, local and territorial public health, animal health and wildlife partners. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to get funds to these partners to build One Health surveillance on the front lines to be able to learn more about the role of animals in the COVID-19 pandemic. And that was really important work and really also help to further strengthen One Health coordination at that state, tribal, local and territorial level on the front lines. We also work with a number of industry partners. We’ve got public private partnerships and one unique example of that at CDC is we have a long standing partnership with the pet industry through the PET advocacy network. And we have worked with them whenever they’re outbreaks involving pets or public health emergencies involving pets. And that’s been a really strong and important partnership. Also some campaigns to educate pet store employees on keeping animals healthy and you know, protecting their health while working with animals in the pet stores as well as how to educate their customers on some of these zoonotic disease issues. And then of course we’ve got a lot of really great partnerships between CDC and academic partners on a number of zoonotic disease issues. One example of that is working with Texas A&M University on a multi-year project looking at the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 and pets who are living in households of people with Covid. And that sort of partnership’s been really important in helping us learn more about the One Health aspects of the pandemic. And then lastly, we work with a number of non-governmental organizations related to public health, to animal health and veterinary medicine and the environment as well as ecology. So just a few examples of some of our different types of partnerships.

Jocelyn Hittle: Wonderful, thank you. Those are great. And it’s really, I ask in part because the CSU Spur campus, part of what we are focusing on is encouraging people to understand that they have a role to play in addressing big global challenges in food, water, health and sustainability regardless of what discipline they’re coming from, that these collaborations allow us to have more impact and that, you know, the diversity of viewpoints and people looking at problems through their own lens is really useful in coming up with novel solutions to challenges. So I think all of the examples you just gave are really wonderful examples of that interdisciplinarity, the diversity of viewpoint and you know, really everyone having a role to play.

Casey Barton Behravesh: It’s important and one of the first things I do when I’m working to plan a new project or even thinking about setting up a One Health meeting is thinking about what sectors need to be involved, who needs to be there and making sure all the right players are represented from the start. And that’s really important for maintaining strong partnerships.

Jocelyn Hittle: Absolutely, so can you speak a little bit about what you see as coming next in One Health? You have talked a little bit in your previous answers about what you’re thinking about right now, but if you could take a little bit more of a long view, what are the next say, five years in One Health gonna bring?

Casey Barton Behravesh: Sure, so we have learned some really important lessons over the last several years, and especially when responding to things like Highly Pathogenic Amin influenza or COVID-19, Ebola virus and now Monkeypox. And some key themes in One Health that we see all around the world in terms of needs to get further organized and strengthened are first formalizing One Health coordination structures for national governments. It’s also helpful to have One Health coordination between a national and subnational level of government as well as with non-governmental partners. So those are some big themes and a big movement going forward. Also, there’s a critical need to improve data and information sharing across sectors, strengthening surveillance systems within sectors but also building bridges across surveillance in the different sectors. So for example, if a challenge shows up in an animal, some new disease that we haven’t seen in the United States before, public health officials could be notified quickly and we could respond faster than ever before we wait to find it in a person. So having those sorts of collaboration in places is really important. And that goes vice versa, right. Because zoonotic diseases can spread between people and animals. Some start off in animals, some start off in people. So we all need to be talking and building those strong surveillance systems, making sure we have good laboratory capacity, validated diagnostic tests, and having these trusted networks in place for the rapid exchange of data and information long before there’s a problem. You never wanna start building those partnerships during an emergency. And we’ve also seen the value and importance of using a One health approach to do joint risk assessments and making sure all the sector’s inputs are going in. For example, we wanna be thinking about biodiversity and conservation needs when we’re planning for public health interventions and not create further problems for our ecosystem. So that’s really important as well. And then also having coordinated messaging, developing joint guidance when it’s appropriate and really working together is another critical need and a lot of progress I predict will be made on that front and the next five years. And then lastly, workforce is a big one. There are a number of great programs to train people in specific sectors. For example, you mentioned that I was trained in CDCs Epidemic Intelligence service or EIS program. That’s a really wonderful program that is open for a variety of health professionals and they actually take in physicians, veterinarians, nurses, PhD scientists, sometimes dentists and others. So it’s a nice cross discipline sort of training in public health, but they’re also trainings for the animal health or veterinary sector for the wildlife and ecosystem sector. And we should have some One Health bridges across those sector specific trainings as well to further strengthen One Health networks early in careers.

Jocelyn Hittle: Wonderful, thanks and thanks for explaining what the EIS is in a bit more detail. That sounds like a wonderful structured way for that interdisciplinary and inter sectorial work to be happening and for folks to be trained at the same time as they’re making some of those professional and personal connections that allow them to do that interdisciplinary work later on. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about communication. So science communication also a really big part of what we’re interested in here at the Spur Campus, and that became something that I know CDC was really focused on in particular over the last several years as so many more eyes maybe were trained on the information that was coming out of CDC than a typical year. Could you talk a little bit about the role of communicating the work you do with the general public and maybe somewhere in there you might note, what is it that you wish the public understood a little bit better about One Health at this point?

Casey Barton Behravesh: Sure, so we have a number of websites at CDC that are very popular that we use to help communicate. For example, we have our cdc.gov/OneHealth website that really gives a lot of great information on the basics of One Health. We share One Health and action stories, we talk about who we are, what we do. In some examples of our work, we’ve got a lot of great graphics on One Health as well. These One Health and action stories have been really popular and they really showcase the linkages across the health of people, animals, plants in our shared environment and some actions being taken across different sectors, how people are working together to address zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance. There’s some COVID examples on there as well. And just a number of examples of One Health in Action. And that’s been a really useful way to share information with the public. We also have a, a hugely popular website at CDC. It’s called our Healthy Pets Healthy People website. And we all know about the power of pets in our lives and how wonderful and important pets are, what a difference they can make in mental health, how they enriched people’s lives during the pandemic. You know, but unfortunately sometimes pets can carry germs that can make people sick and vice versa. And it’s important to know about those risks. Sometimes pets can appear perfectly healthy and happy, but be shedding germs that can make people sick and people don’t realize that. People think the the animals need to appear sick too. And that’s not the case. The good news is there’s some simple things that can be done like hand washing, cleaning up after your pets regularly, regardless of if they’re covered in fur feathers or scales and picking the right pet. You know, they’re people with higher risk conditions. They might have a weakened immune system, you know, someone missing a spleen, someone with diabetes or HIV or cancer. And there’s certain animals that are higher risk for spreading illness to those people both on the domestic and wildlife front. So our Healthy Pets, Healthy People site has some really great information about how to enjoy your pets, how to stay safe around livestock and wildlife as well, and how to keep both people and animals healthy. And it’s a great one stop shop for all information. We have a A to Z list on zoonotic diseases and some great information whether you’re a teacher or working in a daycare or you’re a veterinarian or a healthcare provider or you’re just a pet lover who wants to learn more about how to keep your pets safe and healthy and how to get prepared during an emergency, including your animals as well as your family members.

Jocelyn Hittle: Yeah, that last point is particularly important I think for us in Colorado we’ve had so many wildfire challenges and emergencies where we really do need to have a plan for all of our family members, whether they’re they be people or pets. I also will just note that I will link to all of the resources that you just mentioned in our show notes. And I think they’re particularly relevant given the Spur Campus has one of our, one of our buildings is entirely focused on health and the connections between human and animal health in particular, both some of the things that you described, but also you know, the mental health and physiological connections between people and animals. We have a equine assisted therapy program that lives in that space as well as a veterinary clinic where the vets are doing surgeries behind glass and with microphones and they can talk through what they’re doing and they can talk about pet care and why it is that this particular procedure is necessary and if there are ways to prevent it. So it’s a way for us to sort of talk about the health of people and animals in real time while people are interacting with professionals at work. So very much in line with what you’re just describing.

Casey Barton Behravesh: Yeah, I’ve been fortunate enough to visit the CSU campus, of course in a beautiful location in the mountains and it’s just a really impressive campus and I was fortunate to visit a few years ago.

Jocelyn Hittle: Wonderful, and we’d be happy to welcome you in our, at our Spur Campus in Denver that just opened in January as well next time you’re out here. So we would love to host you here. So I’d love to transition to talking a little bit about you and your path to where you are. You grew up on a ranch in Texas and have wanted to be a veterinarian, I understand from a pretty young age. Can you talk a little bit about how that experience growing up in that environment might have shaped your path and maybe also some of the things about your path that are surprising to you?

Casey Barton Behravesh: Sure, so yes I am definitely one of those kids who’s been telling people that I was going to be a veterinarian since I was eight years old. I remember sitting in third grade writing veterinarian over and over again to make sure I could spell it correctly. But I was fortunate in undergrad to work at an amazing veterinary clinic and got a lot of great experiences in my summers and holidays off from my undergraduate studies. And while I was working there, I realized the importance of veterinarians in the front lines of keeping animals healthy but also their role in protecting people and their families. And honestly, one day we had this client come in with a new puppy and she had a frozen orange juice container. And she looked at me and said, These came outta my dog and dumped 100s of round worms on the table. And I thought, wow, this is so disturbing yet so cool, and I need to figure out what is going on with this? Where do these worms come from? And that opened up a whole can of worms, literally for me to recognize the connection between the environment, the parasites, the host animals, the people and the impact of all of that. And that really got me hooked on public health. So I was fortunate in my undergraduate studies to have a great mentor, Dr. Karen Snowden, who just so happened to be a veterinary parasitologist. And I ended up going and working on a master’s degree with her. And during that time I learned about DDC and the intelligence service, and I thought, this is what I want to do. I wanna work on these, you know, even before it was called One Health, this connection of human animal and environmental health. And from there I went and started a doctorate of public health degree at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. And I was very lucky to have another great mentor there, Dr. James Steele, who’s considered to be the father of veterinary public health. And he really encouraged my interest and for me to go to veterinary school recognizing the need for more veterinarians in public health. So I went to graduate school and then veterinary school and I wouldn’t have it any other way, it was a lot of school. I don’t recommend that for everyone. But it really worked out well to embark on my graduate studies before veterinary school and during veterinary school, really learn the clinical skills I needed as a veterinarian. And in every day in my job, I used all of my degrees to my advantage. And it was a really helpful path, though not necessarily what I intended as a third grader sitting there writing veterinarian over and over again.

Jocelyn Hittle: Yeah, it’s a very common thread to the conversations I have with folks about their career path that there is always some pivot point, some bigger than others. It sounds like for you it was the literal can of worms and then also some really special people and mentors who were able to help kind of shape what that pivot truly looked like and point you in some of the right direction.

Casey Barton Behravesh: Yeah, mentors are really important. And for any students that are listening, I really encourage them, don’t be shy. Seek out mentors, let people know you’re interested in finding a good mentor and it really can make a huge difference in your career path.

Jocelyn Hittle: Absolutely, and I think I wish I had been better about this myself when I was an undergraduate student in particular, you know, recognizing that the faculty who are there at the university level are, you know, really work for you as a student. It is their job to educate you and to be available to you. And so seeking out mentors as early as in an undergraduate space and research opportunities or extracurricular op opportunities that are on the academic side are really important things to do. And it sounds like you took real advantage of the folks who are around you and the expertise they had. So you hit on one of the things I wanna talk a little bit about sort of where, where you are now and kind of how your leadership and your philosophy is shaped by this path. So you mentioned one of the things that’s important to you now as a leader is identifying all the people who should be at the table bringing together lots of different voices. Can you speak to some of the other things that you think of as important in your role as a leader in the One Health space in terms of skillset or philosophy?

Casey Barton Behravesh: Sure, so I always tell folks that I’m working with in One Health, the keys to success in One Health are patients and clear communication. Sometimes, you know, one sector might use a term to mean one thing while the other uses the same word and it means something else and that can cause some disconnect. So it’s important to make sure we’re all speaking a common language and being really clear about what we mean. I also think it’s critical to be transparent talking about the, not just the successes but also the challenges you have, the questions that are being, you know, raised within your organization’s leadership and helping partners like understand the shoes that we’re standing in, but also listening and understanding where they’re coming from as well and looking for that highest common denominator that we all connect on. So for example, with One Health, we all agree that we wanna protect health. Some might be focused more on people, some might be focused more on animals, some might be focused more on the environment but we recognize that, you know, there’s no single person, our sector, our organization even that can achieve One Health alone. And we really have to work together. We have to have strong and trusted partnerships and we have to communicate clearly with each other as an important foundation.

Jocelyn Hittle: Absolutely, I think it’s we hear this that it’s important to talk about. I don’t know, some people frame it as it’s important to talk about where you had failures. It’s important to talk about challenges that maybe you didn’t overcome in the way that you wanted to. And that can be hard and particularly I would guess within a health sphere or in a government role to talk about that. But that transparency and vulnerability can lead to some remarkable opportunities as well.

Casey Barton Behravesh: Absolutely, I’m a firm believer in learning lessons from every outbreak event or project. So frequently when there’s a a big emergency response, there’s an after action review with federal partners. There are ones involving states, there can be ones involving other partners as well. And really hearing and capturing all of those perspectives and thinking about what can we improve next time is really important.

Jocelyn Hittle: Absolutely, so you are a captain in the U.S. Public Health Service. Can you say more about what that means?

Casey Barton Behravesh: Sure, so the United States Public Health Service is our nation’s uniformed services for protecting health. The public health service involves physicians, veterinarians, nurses, engineers, therapists and some other categories of health professionals. And we really work on the front lines of public health to fight disease, to conduct research, to care for patients in underserved communities around the United States and throughout the world. And I’m in my 16th year now in the public health service and am proud that I’ve achieved the rank of captain and I’m able to serve my country as a uniformed service officer.

Jocelyn Hittle: I’m gonna transition to asking you how people can find out more about the CDCs One Health Office and other aspects of your work. We will link to everything you’ve already mentioned in the show notes. Are there any other resources that you’d like to point people toward?

Casey Barton Behravesh: Sure, we work very hard to share information in a timely way with all of our partners. So in addition to our cdc.gov/onehealth website, we also have a One Health newsletter that people can subscribe to and get a couple emails a month with some timely updates on One Health. I mentioned our Healthy Pets Healthy People website, which not only covers pets, but Livestock and Wildlife and the health of people as well. We have a newsletter for our Healthy Pets healthy People. We also have our zoonosies and one Health updates call, which we have on the first Wednesday of every month except for January and July. And it’s a great way to hear timely updates on zoonotic diseases and One Health issues from CDC experts, from other federal agencies, from any of our non-governmental partners as well. And we offer free continuing education so you can sign up to follow the Zoho call or look at past calls as well. And those are some of the main ways we share information on a regular basis with our partners.

Jocelyn Hittle: Wonderful, thank you so much. We’ll be sure to link as many of those things in the notes as we can and it’s helpful for us to, at the Spur Campus also to just be aware of all of these resources, given that so much of what we’re trying to communicate out of our vita building, which is the one that’s focused on on One Health. We wanna be helping people understand where there’s more information on this topic and how they can get engaged. So last question for you. This is our spur of the moment question. And I know you have, since you were eight, told people that you wanted to be a veterinarian. My question for you is, if you were not a veterinarian, what would you have been? Was there anything else you ever entertained?

Casey Barton Behravesh: That is a tough one because I really have not entertained not being a veterinarian maybe a brief stint when I was interested in working in public health and pursuing my doctorate public health degree. But again, got brought back to the veterinary aspect of it and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Jocelyn Hittle: So it truly was a calling for you. You’re one of those rare birds that has really been from the very beginning focused on this topic. That’s amazing.

Casey Barton Behravesh: Yes, I really can’t think of anything else I ever wanted to be.

Jocelyn Hittle: Okay, can you tell us a little bit just, you know, this’ll be my second spur of the moment question. I’m tossing another one in. So you have pets at home? Anything exotic, is it the standard cats, dogs?

Casey Barton Behravesh: So when you ask my children how many pets we have, it’s very embarrassing because they say, I don’t know but they really do know because they all have names. So we have a couple dogs, we have a cat, we have a house rabbit, we have a bearded dragon, we have a crested gecko. I have a very large tank full of hermit crabs that I rescue. And we also have a flock of backyard chickens.

Jocelyn Hittle: Wonderful, that’s quite a collection, a menagerie. That’s wonderful. That must keep you and your kids busy. Do they have specific responsibilities? Are they on pet duty?

Casey Barton Behravesh: Yes, we divide up who’s in charge of what pets. And thankfully my husband is also an animal lover and very supportive of all of these pets. And all my kids’ friends think I’m the coolest mom ever because their parents would never let them have so many pets.

Jocelyn Hittle: Yes, and I that they get a chance to learn a little bit about all, all of those different animals. I mean, not everybody has geckos and lizards and all of these things, so.

Casey Barton Behravesh: It’s been fun. I’ve been able to take some of the animals to schools for like 4-H meetings or Girl Scout events and things like that and it’s a lot of fun to teach kids about animals and how they benefit our lives.

Jocelyn Hittle: Absolutely, so it’s the One Health piece is woven into all aspects of your life, it sounds like.

Casey Barton Behravesh: It really is.

Jocelyn Hittle: Yeah, wonderful. Well, Captain Barton Behravesh thank you so much for being a guest on CSU Spur of the Moment podcast today. We really appreciate it and we will, as I said, link to all of the resources you’ve already mentioned and really appreciate your time today.

Casey Barton Behravesh: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

Jocelyn Hittle: The CSU Spur of the Moment Podcast is produced by Kevin Samuelson and our theme music is by Ketsa. Please visit the show notes for links mentioned in this episode. We hope you’ll join us in two weeks for the next episode. Until then, be well.