WHO plans Central Asia course to link environmental health with One Health practice
The World Health Organization is seeking an international consultant to develop a policy- and practice-oriented training course that brings environmental health into One Health work across Central Asia. The assignment is framed as a six-month consultancy based in Bonn, with a part-time schedule and a final product designed for policymakers and technical staff working across the human health, agriculture and environment sectors.
The brief is unusually specific about the problem it aims to solve. Environmental health is often treated as a supporting discipline rather than a core component of One Health, yet the course is meant to reverse that hierarchy by placing climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, water stress, land degradation and ecosystem disruption at the center of risk assessment and action. In practical terms, the training package must help participants identify environmental hazards before they become health emergencies, trace exposure pathways, and connect monitored data on water, soil, air, food, waste and ecosystems into a single operational picture.
The consultancy also reflects a wider policy reality: One Health is no longer only a concept for zoonotic disease specialists or veterinary teams. It now spans governance, surveillance, prevention, emergency preparedness, food systems, and accountability across sectors that often operate in parallel. Central Asia brings its own pressures to that agenda, including the need for regional cooperation, country-level adaptation, and examples grounded in the realities of the region rather than generic global templates.
Course design will be anchored in governance, surveillance and prevention
WHO is looking for a consultant who can review relevant WHO/Europe and global reference materials and then convert them into a coherent curriculum. The course must be built around the One Health Joint Plan of Action and its implementation guide, while also addressing the triple planetary crisis and its implications for health. Climate, biodiversity and pollution are not treated as background themes; they are core drivers that shape spillover risk, food safety, antimicrobial resistance and the resilience of communities.
The requested course structure must contain 8 to 10 modules and fit within 30 to 36 hours of delivery. Each module needs clearly defined learning objectives, content elements, teaching methods and expected outputs. WHO is also asking for a full set of presentation slides, facilitator notes, and a final facilitator-oriented course outline, all written in WHO style and usable by both technical and policy audiences.
There is a strong implementation bias running through the assignment. The course must explain the specific contribution of environmental health practitioners to One Health, including how they support joint zoonotic-risk assessments, identify environmental reservoirs and pathways of antimicrobial resistance, and inform interventions in agriculture, food safety and livestock systems. It must also address nature-based solutions with a realistic balance of benefits and risks, rather than assuming every ecological intervention is automatically protective.
A single sentence captures the operational ambition of the work: the course is meant to turn environmental evidence into policy, budgets and measurable action.
Central Asia-specific training will need to bridge ecology, agriculture and public health
The consultancy brief makes clear that the material cannot be a generic introduction to One Health. It must incorporate Central Asia-specific considerations and examples where appropriate, and it must speak to the interfaces where environmental drivers shape human, animal and ecosystem outcomes. Those interfaces include zoonotic disease pathways, crop and livestock systems, food security, ecosystem services, wildlife and habitat risks, water and sanitation, and emergency preparedness.
The design also needs to anticipate the users who will rely on it. WHO expects the final product to suit policymakers as well as technical staff from the human, agriculture and environment sectors, which means the course has to move comfortably between strategy and field application. That requires adult-learning methods, exercises and outputs that do more than explain concepts; they must help participants practice integrated surveillance, interpret climate and ecological data, and support prevention at source.
The competency list attached to the consultancy reads like a blueprint for a regional workforce strategy. By the end of the course, participants should be able to locate sources of exposure and transmission, integrate environmental and health data streams, assess wildlife and habitat-related risks, and contribute to early warning and response. They should also be able to understand the health co-benefits of prevention strategies and the possible unintended effects of poorly designed interventions. Those are not abstract academic skills. They determine whether a ministry, laboratory, or field team can move from fragmented observation to coordinated action.
WHO’s contract terms point to a technical deliverable with regional policy value
The deliverables are staged across the contract period, beginning with an inception note and workplan, followed by a detailed course outline, draft module descriptions, a full slide deck, facilitator notes, a final outline, a short reference list, and a revised package incorporating WHO comments. The final deadline is 30 June 2027, and the consultancy is budgeted at USD 350 to 499 per day depending on experience, with a total expected commitment of 60 working days.
WHO is asking for an advanced university degree in public health, environmental health, veterinary public health, epidemiology, ecology, health policy or a related field. At least seven years of experience in One Health, environmental health or multisectoral public health capacity building is required, along with demonstrated experience in developing training or capacity-building materials for technical and policymaking audiences. Knowledge of Central Asia’s environmental health or One Health challenges is listed as essential, and familiarity with Russian or another regional language is desirable.
The notice also signals the way WHO wants the product to function. It is not being designed as a static educational package. It is meant to be a tool for regional implementation, with a governance frame, a surveillance frame, a prevention frame and a policy frame. In a region where climate stress, ecosystem disruption and sectoral fragmentation can interact quickly, a course that helps align environmental health with One Health may do more than build skills; it may define how future risk is recognized before it hardens into crisis.
What remains uncertain is how the final curriculum will balance breadth against usability. The brief is expansive, and the success of the assignment will depend on whether the resulting course can translate a wide set of environmental and One Health priorities into a compact, credible training package that Central Asian institutions can actually use.