The 'One Health' concept, according to the One Health High Level Expert Panel, is a unifying, integrative approach that seeks to balance and optimise the health of people, animals, plants and ecosystems in a sustainable manner. It recognises that the health of people, domestic and wild animals, plants and the environment (including ecosystems) in which they develop are closely related to each other and interdependent. One Health mobilises multiple sectors and disciplines so that they can work together to prevent health-disrupting processes, promote well-being and counter threats to health and ecosystems. At the same time they can also address the collective need for clean water, energy and healthy nutritious food, take action on climate change, and contribute to sustainable development. It offers a collaborative approach involving society and governments that aims to understand, anticipate and address risks in order to make it possible to achieve global health [¹].

This concept includes zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance, food safety, vector-borne diseases, environmental health, chronic diseases, and mental and occupational health, among others.

As we see it, the 'One Health' concept imposes the need for transformations in higher education, basically in terms of establishing new strategies that make it possible to train professionals with a broad knowledge of the relationship between humans, animals, plants and the environment. This approach must establish critical analyses that allow us to assess the health situations in which we may find ourselves [²].

When considering health under this vision, it becomes essential to bear in mind the need to perform inter-, multi- and cross-disciplinary analyses that reevaluate the current curricular designs and the development of the training process, its aims and the profile of health science students, in the broadest sense of the concept. The fundamental objective should be to analyse the importance of the One Health approach in the processes involved in training health professionals. Collaboration between health programmes must be coordinated and promoted in order to address the problems of the health-disease process from the point of view of the relationships that come about among human beings, animals, plants and the environment.

Universities have a responsibility to provide training that is in line with the advancement of science, technology and innovation, as well as to provide students with an all-round education. In the specific case of health training, it must be endorsed by a comprehensive knowledge of all the elements that affect human beings in their context and that intervene in their state of health [³].

Sustainable Development Goal 3 of the 2030 Agenda establishes that States must make health a priority [⁴]. Animal, plant and environmental health must be safeguarded to ensure public health. For this reason, a deeper understanding of emerging and reemerging diseases is needed. It is necessary to study the zoonoses and epidemiological emergencies that could potentially become pandemics, and which are related to alterations caused by human beings and climatic changes in the environment. We must not forget the natural reservoirs of all origins and their control.

Knowing the basics so as to be able to develop predictive models for the progress of diseases is another aspect that is currently of great importance, as demonstrated by the recent pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 [⁵]. Technological advances are associated with large amounts of data that provide key information for the assessment and mitigation of risks to the environment and society. Having the knowledge to analyse these data can facilitate the analysis of human behaviour and, therefore, also the behaviour of infectious agents: their most common routes of contagion, rate of proliferation, the most vulnerable population or cultural habits that open up doors to contagion.

This multidisciplinary approach, underpinned by the necessary specific knowledge for each degree within the field of health professionals, will enable them to incorporate the integrative vision offered by the 'One Health' approach.

Of course, it must also be taken into account that, in university health education, physical and mental health are determined by socioeconomic, cultural and environmental relations, and by the transforming activity that humans carry out with nature, as well as by technological development and demographic growth, all of which becomes a human-based pressure on ecosystems.

The profound transformations that the world is undergoing make it necessary to put forward alternatives that stimulate creative and innovative thinking, with an integrating view of the aspects that make up the current concept of health, so that the new health professionals can address the challenges faced by society today.

Health professionals' training should prepare them to carry out comprehensive assessments that enable them to make rapid, accurate and timely decisions based on critical reflective analyses of the overall health status.