Why youth are key to One Health’s success: Empowering the next generation for global resilience

As the challenges facing our planet – like antimicrobial resistance (AMR), food safety breaches, zoonotic threats, and environmental degradation – grow increasingly complex and interconnected, traditional siloed responses are no longer enough. The One Health approach, which brings together human, animal, plant, and ecosystem health, offers a path forward. But a critical element often overlooked is youth engagement.

FAO identifies young people as central to driving innovation, ensuring sustainability, and bridging gaps in the One Health approach. Integrating youth into One Health is more than symbolic – it's strategic. As creators, communicators, and implementers, youth drive innovative awareness through digital media, art, and community outreach; build adaptive capacity via training in surveillance, field diagnostics, and ecosystem monitoring; serve as bridges between sectors – animal, human, plant and environmental – operationalizing One Health in real time; and advocate for accountability, sustainability and equity.

Youth voices shape One Health policy and practice

FAO’s One Health youth engagement strategy emphasizes that youth involvement increases ownership of global health goals and delivers creative, effective solutions in real time. An inspiring example is the RENOFARM youth poster challenge, where students expressed their insights on One Health through visual storytelling, fostering grassroots awareness of food safety and health integration.

Bringing young people’s voices to the centre of One Health advocacy work is crucial as it will allow innovative solutions to be introduced and incorporated. As part of FAO’s youth engagement initiative, The One Health Future We Want, FAO organized a youth dialogue and a One Health Youth Art Contest which invited youth from all around the world to express and submit the One Health future they want in creative art pieces, combining the power of youth and creativity.

In Indonesia, FAO and the Ministry of Agriculture partnered with young animators in the Creators Challenge – a science video competition promoting One Health themes. As Dr Nasrullah of the Ministry of Agriculture noted, youth are “innovators and users of new technologies…critical to responding to health security threats.” Their digital outreach played an essential role in communicating complex One Health issues to broader audiences.

Hands-on engagement: Learning by doing

Education and practical experiences elevate youth engagement. Across regions, FAO supports initiatives like beekeeping programmes that engage young people in protecting pollinators – essential for biodiversity and food security. Meanwhile, global youth competitions such as the Transformative Research Challenge empower young researchers to develop innovative and impactful solutions to transform agrifood systems, fostering intergenerational discussions and driving youth-led action on One Health, AMR and disease outbreaks.

These activities offer more than awareness – they help train the next generation of field veterinarians, lab technicians, agronomists, communicators, and community leaders who can implement One Health policies on the ground.

However, for youth engagement to reach its full potential, it must move beyond individual programmes to become systematically embedded in global health frameworks.

Formalizing youth in One Health plans

Beyond individual programmes and competitions, the One Health community is recognizing that sustainable change requires institutionalizing youth involvement in policy development and implementation.

The One Health Joint Plan of Action – a joint initiative of FAO, UNEP, WHO and WOAH – explicitly includes youth participation as a strategic priority. It highlights youth as agents of collaboration, innovation, and leadership alongside governments, civil society, and academia. Development of national targets, policies, and surveillance systems must include young stakeholders to ensure sustainability and effectiveness.

The plan emphasizes upstream prevention, where youth can lead risk analysis, digital surveillance, and environmental management, ensuring that One Health isn’t only a buzzword, but a youth-driven way of life.

Tools for youth-led action

FAO with the Quadripartite collaboration have created a practical antimicrobial resistance toolkit for youth, offering 11 tools, case studies, and communication resources tailored to mobilize youth in the global movement against AMR. The toolkit empowers young agrifood professionals to engage in behaviour change campaigns, advocacy, and multi-stakeholder dialogues – bridging science and policy from the ground up.