Global Health Vet – A One Health approach to public health

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Hello everyone!

My name is Gaël Lamielle and I am a veterinarian pursuing a career in public health.

Why public health you ask? (And I know you will ask, because I’ve been asked that many times). Well a lot of people think that being a

At the clinic with Effie, perhaps the strangest cat in the world

veterinarian and a public health professional are 2 distinct fields and they believe I have to leave my veterinary career behind to step into public health.

Public health is a very broad topic and there are many angles to which one can approach it. Veterinarians are in fact very intimately to public health, in virtually every aspect of their work. Even a local small animal practitioner is a public health advocate by vaccinating pets, or treating them against diseases such as parasite Toxacara for example, which is very common in cats and dogs, but can cause serious illness in people.

Veterinary public health promotes public health from the animal perspective. It recognizes the inherent interdependence between humans and animals. For more about this idea, check out the About One Health post.

A little bit about me, I was born and raised in Lyon, France and I later moved to the USA. I became a veterinarian in 2009 after attending Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California.

Throughout my studies, I was exposed to public and global health through projects in Latin America as well as wildlife medicine in South Africa.

I was also an active member of the International Veterinary Student Association (IVSA), probably the best association in the world (but maybe I’m biased…), where I made great friends and where I learned to recognize the different challenges in learning and practicing veterinary medicine throughout the world. Check out their website at: www.ivsa.org.

Since I graduated, I have been working part-time at a small animal clinic in Southern California as well as at Western University. I also recently completed a Masters in Public Health (MPH) with University of Minnesota . In the future, I hope to continue promoting global veterinary public health and I would like to work for global public health organizations such as the CDC, OIE or WHO. We shall see…

With this website, I hope to promote the perspective of the veterinarian in addressing public health issues and share experiences on a local and international level. Let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Gaël Lamielle, DVM MPH