WHO adds a Western Pacific hub for One Health implementation
The World Health Organization has opened the Western Pacific Region’s first WHO Collaborating Centre for One Health Implementation, placing Shanghai Jiao Tong University at the center of a new regional effort to turn a broad public health concept into measurable action. The centre was inaugurated on 26 October 2026 at the School of Medicine, with the launch formally announced on 2 November 2026.
The timing reflects a hard epidemiologic reality. Avian influenza continues to circulate in animals and spill over into people, antimicrobial resistance is making routine infections harder to treat, and climate-driven pressures are reshaping disease patterns across the region. In that setting, One Health is not a slogan; it is an operating model for health systems that must follow pathogens, food systems, ecosystems and human behavior at the same time.
Why the Western Pacific needs a One Health command center
The Western Pacific faces simultaneous pressures from rapid urbanization, intensifying food production, biodiversity loss and climate change. Each of those forces can alter the interface where pathogens emerge, spread or persist. When those pressures overlap, outbreaks become harder to detect early and harder to contain once they cross species boundaries.
One Health links human health, animal health and environmental health into a single framework for planning and response. In practice, that means ministries and technical agencies need shared priorities, shared data and shared protocols rather than separate silos that only converge after a crisis has already begun. The new centre is meant to strengthen exactly that kind of alignment.
Sixteen of the region’s 28 Member States now have a One Health coordination mechanism, an increase of 20 percentage points over two years. Eight countries have also held National Bridging Workshops to convert cross-sector coordination into joint work on common priorities. Those numbers suggest real institutional movement, but they also show how uneven implementation still is across the region.
A sharper gap remains in basic preparedness. Of 13 Joint External Evaluations conducted in the region since 2023, five found that the country did not yet have a unified, multisectoral list of priority zoonotic diseases. Without that list, surveillance planning, laboratory readiness and response training can drift in different directions. In outbreak prevention, a missing priority list is not an administrative detail; it can delay the recognition of which pathogens deserve the closest watch.
Measuring implementation, not just commitment
Designated for 2026–2030, the centre will support WHO in three main areas. First, it will develop a framework and indicators to monitor and evaluate One Health implementation at national and subnational levels. Second, it will produce communication materials and support the Quadripartite Communities of Practice on One Health governance and return on investment. Third, it will conduct research at the human–animal–environment interface to inform regional risk mapping of priority zoonotic diseases, including climate-sensitive zoonoses in the Pacific, and to develop community-centered approaches to risk communication and surveillance.
That focus on measurement matters because One Health often stalls at the level of consensus statements. A framework with indicators creates a way to compare countries, track progress over time and identify where coordination exists on paper but not in practice. It also helps governments justify investment by linking governance structures to surveillance performance and outbreak readiness.
Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific, framed the launch as an implementation milestone rather than a symbolic one. The question is no longer whether countries commit to One Health, but how they implement it and measure progress. The centre is intended to help the region answer that question with data rather than declarations.
China’s scientific capacity becomes regional infrastructure
The centre is hosted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s School of Global Health and was unveiled during the High-Level Forum on One Health Action. Leaders from the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association and other national and international partners attended the inauguration, reflecting a multi-institutional model that mirrors the logic of One Health itself.
This arrangement also expands the regional value of China’s academic and institutional capacity. Martin Taylor, WHO Representative in China, said the centre gives WHO a scientific and institutional base that can help China’s experience reach neighboring countries and partners further afield. The statement points to a practical advantage: a regional collaborating centre can translate national experience into usable guidance, training and technical tools for other settings facing similar risks.
The collaboration did not begin with the inauguration. WHO and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have worked together since 2019, when WHO joined the launch of the School of Global Health. Since then, the relationship has included academic exchanges, joint training, advisory work and field research. A Cooperation Project Agreement for 2025–2027 now supports joint development of a One Health decision support toolkit and a training programme with the WHO Academy.
Governance, surveillance and the human side of risk communication
One Health often succeeds or fails at the point where technical systems meet community trust. Surveillance can identify unusual patterns, but public messaging determines whether people act on warnings, change behavior and seek care early. The new centre is expected to support community-centered approaches to risk communication and surveillance, which is especially relevant for zoonotic disease threats that move across farming, wildlife and household environments.
The centre will also contribute to regional risk mapping of priority zoonotic diseases, including climate-sensitive infections in the Pacific. Climate change can reshape vector ranges, animal migration patterns, rainfall and food production, all of which alter exposure pathways. Risk mapping in that context is not static cartography; it is a way to keep surveillance aligned with a moving biological target.
A complementary role already exists elsewhere in the WHO network. The centre in Shanghai will work alongside the WHO Collaborating Centre for One Health in Ireland, which focuses on capacity-building and training. Together, these centres can support the Quadripartite One Health Joint Plan of Action led by FAO, UNEP, WHO and the World Organisation for Animal Health.
A dream becoming reality is how Dr Zhou Xiao-Nong described the launch, calling it the result of years of effort to prioritize One Health implementation in the region. The phrasing captures a long arc of institutional work, but the clinical and public health stakes are immediate: stronger governance can improve detection of zoonotic threats, better surveillance can shorten response time, and clearer coordination can reduce the chance that warning signs are missed between sectors.
What remains unresolved is how quickly member states will be able to translate this new regional support into concrete national systems. The centre’s first test will be whether its indicators, tools and training change how governments identify priority zoonotic diseases, coordinate across sectors and communicate risk before the next spillover event forces the issue.