A nurse in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo treats children with recurring diarrhea after seasonal floods.
A few kilometers away, a veterinary worker documents the same contaminated water killing livestock.
They work for different ministries.
They use different reporting systems.
They have never met.
The connection is invisible to the system, even though both workers can see it.
This pattern repeats across the world.
In the Balkans, the Asian tiger mosquito has spread to 13 European countries, carrying dengue risk into regions where neither human nor animal health surveillance is prepared.
In Côte d’Ivoire, researchers at the human-wildlife interface monitor primate health and community health at the same time, because the diseases do not respect the line between the forest and the village.
In Rwanda, the government increased domestic funding for neglected tropical diseases eightfold in one year, because they understood that when donor money disappears, only connected systems survive.
The Geneva Learning Foundation has launched a new peer learning to address this gap: One Health: Connecting people, animals, and the environment.
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It is free, text-based, and works on any phone.
It is open to anyone who cares about human health, animal health, or the environment.
This primer is part of the Certificate peer learning programme for leadership in climate change and health. Learn more…
What participants do
This primer helps participants understand their own challenges – and learn from the challenges of others – through the lens of One Health.
It explores what connected action looks like in practice: why systems stay disconnected, what happens when they fail, and what communities are doing about it.
Participants describe a situation from their work where human health, animal health, and the environment were connected.
They identify programs in their area that serve the same community but operate in silos.
They develop a specific plan to connect their work with another sector in the next three months, using resources they already have.
Then a colleague in another country reads their analysis and responds.
They read what their colleague wrote and respond.
That exchange is the learning.
A nurse in Nigeria, an agricultural officer in Germany, and a veterinary worker in the DRC may all examine the same questions from entirely different realities.
That diversity of experience is what no textbook can provide, but a structured peer exchange can.
Learn more and enroll now | En savoir plus et s’inscrire
Why peer learning matters for One Health
One Health is experienced differently in every country, every climate zone, and every system.
- A community health worker in a rural area sees the connections between sick animals and sick children every day but may have no system to report them together.
- A policymaker in a national ministry may manage separate budget lines for diseases that share the same vector.
- An agricultural officer may see the effects of pesticide use on water quality without any link to the health clinic downstream.
The programme draws on the latest global evidence from academic research, global guidelines, and, most important, the lived experiences of thousands of health workers participating in The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Teach to Reach initiative.
The primer covers critical evidence: how vertical silos were built, why donor dependency created a sustainability cliff, how climate change is expanding disease vectors into new territories, and what communities in Zimbabwe, the Balkans, and West Africa have done with existing resources.
But the lived experience of practitioners at the point of care is what the global conversation is missing.
It is what the WHO-FAO-WOAH-UNEP One Health Joint Plan of Action calls for but cannot itself deliver.
This course is designed to surface that experience, connect it across borders, and turn it into evidence.
The course format
Short, text-based readings.
No video.
No heavy downloads.
Works on any phone.
We chose text deliberately.
Not because video costs more, but because when you are thinking through something that matters to your community, your brain works better without distractions.
The primer starts with each participant’s reality.
The local context is the primary text.
The course provides the framework.
The participant provides the evidence.
The credential
Participants who complete the primer earn a certificate of completion from The Geneva Learning Foundation that documents the work they produced in the course.
The programme
This primer is a starting point.
It is part of the Certificate peer learning programme for leadership in climate change and health.
- One Health primer (this course). Explore the connections between human, animal, and environmental health. Analyze the silos in your setting. Develop a cross-sector action plan.
- Peer learning exercise. Create a detailed project plan, reviewed and improved by peers over 16 days. Leave with a peer-reviewed document ready for use.
- Impact Accelerator. Implement your plan with weekly peer support and accountability. Gather evidence that your actions caused measurable change.
As the programme develops, alumni who distinguish themselves be invited to serve as Guides on the Side for deeper learning activities and to become programme Ambassadors.
For the primer, the structured peer exchange is the engine.
Participants are helping to generate new evidence about what One Health looks like in practice at the community level.
Why now?
Today, the French government is hosting the One Health global summit in Lyon, France.
2026 is the final year of the WHO-FAO-WOAH-UNEP One Health Joint Plan of Action (2022 to 2026).
The 79th World Health Assembly meets in Geneva from 18 to 23 May 2026.
The 9th World One Health Congress convenes in Lisbon in September 2026.
At every one of these events, policymakers look for evidence of what One Health looks like in practice at the community level.
This course is designed to produce that evidence, directly from the people who live it every day.
The more professionals who share their experiences, the stronger the evidence that the gap between human health, animal health, and the environment is not a theoretical problem but an operational reality that affects communities across the world.
What professionals say about this programme
After completing the inaugural course on climate change and health, a health worker in Nepal wrote: “This transformed me from an implementer into a change agent.”
A nurse in Tanzania said: “The peer review showed me there is potential for networking with colleagues from different countries”.
About The Geneva Learning Foundation’s climate change and health work
The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) is a non-profit foundation based in Switzerland that connects over 80,000 health practitioners across 137 countries through peer learning.
- In July 2023, nearly 5,000 health workers from 68 countries gathered through TGLF’s platform to share first-hand observations of how climate change was already affecting the health of their communities. Over 1,200 documented accounts revealed consequences that formal surveillance systems had not yet captured: crop failures driving malnutrition, floods spreading infectious disease, heat waves disrupting health services, and prolonged dust storms causing spikes in respiratory illness.
- In 2024, Teach to Reach 11 brought together 24,610 health workers from more than 70 countries to deepen the exchange.
- In July 2025, TGLF launched the Certificate peer learning programme for leadership in climate change and health, the first programme designed by and for professionals facing climate change impacts on health.
What makes this programme different from conventional training is its starting point: it does not begin with what experts think health workers need to know, but with what health workers already see, already do, and already know from working in their communities every day. TGLF’s approach recognizes health workers as trusted advisers to communities, not as passive recipients of knowledge.
The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) is a member of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education.