Globally, one health has been increasingly accepted as an effective framework for managing health issues at the human-animal-environment interface

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) received a $772,948 project grant award from the U.S. Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service Region 9 Headquarters under the Zoonotic Disease Initiative (CFDA 15.069) program. The grant will support IDNR's efforts to strengthen Indiana's wildlife health and disease surveillance network through September 2026. Key deliverables include conducting a gap analysis of the program's processes and weaknesses, developing occupational health guidelines to protect staff and stakeholders, partnering with the Nongame Mammal Program to institute surveillance framework, and updating the wildlife health application to allow expanded disease monitoring activities. The funding aims to enhance Indiana's ability to prevent, detect, and respond to global health threats at the human-animal-environment interface through a coordinated, collaborative One Health approach aligned with the objectives of the Zoonotic Disease Initiative program.

This integrated approach may be particularly important for preventing, predicting, detecting, and responding to global health threats. Though effective, a one health approach is inherently complicated because IT requires coordination, communication, and collaboration across scales and disciplines. IT can only be as effective as the weakest link in collaborative networks. The overarching goal of this proposal is to create a healthy, inclusive, and sustainable wildlife health program that has strong internal and external partnerships as well as clear succession planning. We aim to incorporate four objectives to achieve sustainability goals including 1) conducting a GAP analysis to determine the effective processes and shortcomings of our program, 2) developing official occupational health guidelines to protect the health of staff, volunteers, and external stakeholders, 3) partnering with the nongame mammal program to institute a framework for surveillance, and 4) updating our wildlife life health application to allow for increased disease surveillance activities.