About
The Spring 2026 MSU One Health Research Sprint is a structured, time-limited process for MSU faculty across colleges, disciplines, and appointment types to explore shared opportunities in One Health and identify a small set of research themes that MSU is well-positioned to advance soon. The sprint is designed to strengthen connections among faculty working across One Health domains, clarify MSU's distinctive strengths, and identify where increased collaboration is needed. By early June 2026, the sprint will produce a portfolio of four to six research theme areas. Each theme will be documented in a short white paper and concept brief.
This is an internal planning and community-building effort designed to move from broad faculty interest toward a smaller set of clearly defined themes for further development. Faculty participation will shape the outcome through an open Request for Information, April workshops open to all interested faculty, and smaller May working sessions for those who choose to take on a more active drafting role.
This sprint is not the formal launch of an MSU One Health Research Network. It is intended to help clarify where faculty strengths cluster, where stronger bridges are needed, and which themes may be most promising for more immediate support, pilot activities, and other next-step development.
Who is welcome to participate?
This sprint is open to MSU faculty from any college or unit, including tenure-system, fixed-term, emeritum, research, extension, and clinical faculty whose work may inform or benefit from a One Health framing.
Why participate?
No single college, unit, or discipline can define MSU’s One Health priorities on its own. Faculty participation is essential to identify where MSU has distinctive strengths, where collaboration is most needed, and which research themes have the greatest potential for collective impact. All faculty are welcome, including tenure-stream, fixed-term, emeritum, research, extension, or clinical faculty. If your work connects to human, animal, plant, environmental, social, behavioral, policy, data, design, or community dimensions of health, this sprint is an opportunity to help shape the future direction of One Health research at MSU. You do not need to be engaged in One Health research already to contribute. Faculty whose work is disciplinary, applied, community-engaged, methodological, policy-oriented, or humanistic are all welcome. Many strong efforts begin with a core disciplinary strength and then integrate complementary expertise where it changes the question, strengthens the evidence, or expands what solutions are possible.
Participating also offers direct benefits to faculty. It creates opportunities to connect with potential collaborators across MSU, take part in facilitated conversations that help sharpen themes and identify missing perspectives, and help shape how promising research areas are framed for future development. The sprint will not itself fund projects, but it is intended to help position faculty and teams for future pilot support, capacity-building investments, and other next-step opportunities.
To support this work, OR&I and the President’s Office will provide facilitation and convening support through the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative Center and CIRCLE. This support is intended to help faculty build on existing strengths, identify new connections across disciplines, and develop collaborative ideas that could be pursued beyond the sprint.
What participation does and does not require: You do not need a polished project, a complete team, or prior experience in large interdisciplinary initiatives to participate. Submitting a Request for Information does not commit you to attending workshops. Attending an April workshop does not commit you to joining a May workshop.
One Health working definition (Spring 2026)
MSU is using a shared, working definition of One Health Research to support collaboration across disciplines and to make it easier for faculty to see where their scholarship fits. This definition is intended to be practical: it clarifies what makes a project meaningfully “One Health,” while leaving space for concepts, methods, and values that vary across fields.
MSU One Health Research is an integrated approach for addressing coupled challenges affecting people, animals (domestic and wild), plants, and ecosystems. It does this by acting on shared drivers that connect these domains across sectors and scales, including ecological change, social and structural determinants, and governance conditions.
This work can include human health and well-being, animal welfare, and food systems; it can also include biodiversity and ecosystem function; and it can support translation into prevention, preparedness, management, practice, and policy where relevant. One Health Research can operate along a continuum of disciplinary collaboration: investigators and teams can start where they are and progressively integrate complementary disciplines, methods, and forms of expertise as needed to address complex, interdependent challenges. At MSU, One Health Research also includes attention to the governance, ethics, incentives, and knowledge systems that shape what actions are feasible, who benefits, and how trade-offs are surfaced and made accountable in practice.
In addition, prevention-focused approaches reduce harm before it occurs. Examples include vaccination and screening, land and water management that protects habitat and water quality, and farm practices that strengthen soil health and reduce pest and disease pressure. These approaches can also reduce disruption and protect livelihoods by mitigating losses and speeding recovery when shocks occur. Accordingly, MSU treats equitable economic well-being and resilience as core One Health outcomes alongside human, animal, plant, and ecosystem outcomes.
One Health is not everything related to health or the environment. It refers to work where linking people, animals, plants, ecosystems, and the systems that govern them changes the research question, the evidence needed, or the kinds of responses that become possible.
This is a living definition. It will be revised over time based on evidence and input from MSU scholars, partners, and communities. This working definition is guiding the sprint. It will also help the sprint team and workshop participants assess whether proposed themes are sufficiently integrative, appropriately scoped, and strong candidates for further development.