Dr. Gene Olinger began his academic journey studying Environmental Health Sciences at Old Dominion University, including community water systems, foodborne outbreak investigation, and rabies virus fieldwork. After working as a Senior Environmental Health Specialist in Virginia, Dr. Olinger completed his PhD at Rush University, studying HIV. Since that time, he has worked in multiple contexts, including filovirus and MERS research and outbreak response work at USAMRIID, the NIH, and serving as a Principal Science Advisor for the not-for-profit research and development organization MRIGlobal, developing high containment laboratory training at Boston University, and teaching at Kansas City University and Hood College. He also co-founded Global Cambio, a non-profit using a One Health approach to improve global health through education as well as the promotion of human and animal welfare.
One of the lessons from Dr. Olinger’s extensive experience is that bringing together multiple disciplines into a single team aids respectful engagement with the local societal structures during outbreak response work. He recounted a story from his field work where an anthropologist on the team addressed usage of the term “witch doctor,” recommending instead the use of the term “traditional healer,” which is more respectful of the rigorous training they go through in the healing arts of their community. Moreover, outside teams coming in to help with an outbreak can be perceived as “stealing their business,” he noted. It is thus essential to develop strategies to integrate with the local society to address emerging pathogens without alienating the people directly affected by an outbreak.
Dr. Olinger also highlighted the value of drawing from the local knowledge regarding an outbreak’s context to guide a thorough investigation. Dr. Olinger is working in collaboration with Dr. Gregory Gray, another One Health scientist at UTMB, on a study of H5N1 in the context of dairy farms. As part of this project, they surveyed workers and collected samples from a Texas dairy farm. Dr. Olinger emphasized the tremendous amount of data collected by the farmers regarding their herds, including animal health, milk loads, and rumination tracking, as well as their observations of other animals, such as birds and cats, that frequent the farm. Moreover, the farm workers are also able to relate information regarding interactions between workers and the animals. Dr. Olinger noted that, when outside scientists approach sites like these in response to outbreaks, they can sometimes focus just on the pathogen in question. Incorporating the extensive data provided by the farmers themselves creates a more detailed snapshot of the various dynamics that can shape the effects and spread of H5N1.
Thus, by fostering relationships with the people and social structures directly impacted by emerging pathogens, a One Health approach integrates scientific investigations into the existing health landscape and draws upon local knowledge to expand the data available for infectious disease surveillance.
Looking forward, Dr. Olinger sees opportunities for One Health research to move toward developing methods predicting disease risk. In his own work, he is specifically pursuing this in the context of Lassa virus pre-syndrome diagnostics. Beyond his own work, Dr. Olinger believes that higher resolution models overlaying multiple data sets will be essential for making disease risk predictions relevant to affected populations. Dr. Olinger noted that an essential part of this on-going work is that “One Health is a team sport” and that efforts should be made to create multidisciplinary scientific teams and reach out to non-scientists, policy makers, and economic leaders so that everyone is involved. In doing so, we will create models and interventions that address the health needs of our communities in a way that reflects the realities of the human, animal, and environmental systems at play.