Prof. Jakob Zinsstag has handed over presidency of the International Association for Ecology and Health (IAEH) to Prof. Kerry Arabena, chair for indigenous help at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her election was in the margin of the One Health EcoHealth conference 2016 (OHEH 2016) which was held in Melbourne (Australia) from the 3rd to 7th of December 2016. The IAEH members expressed appreciation to Prof. Zinsstag for his work and commitment.

As an enthusiastic advocate of the One Health approach, Prof. Zinsstag has always combined expertise from various disciplines in his various research projects and promoted these approaches during his term of president of IAEH. As an example, in January 2016, he participated in a transdisciplinary stakeholder seminar on the health of mobile pastoralists in Chad where representatives of several mobile pastoralist communities met together with local and national authorities and scientists to discuss progress on health care for mobile people in Chad http://bit.ly/2hp10Mh .

In 2012, Prof. Zinsstag published a key letter on ‘Health & Ecology: Let us Join Forces http://bit.ly/2hEq0hR, in which he encouraged more collaboration for the recognition of the links between human, animal and environmental health. He wrote: ‘My vision for a maturing IAEH is that over 100 hundred academic and research institutions may join forces as institutional members of the association, so that we can raise our political profile and influence analogous to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and actively contribute to the shaping of international policy.’ Today, this vision is becoming more and more a reality with the partnerships involving several institutions including the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire (CSRS).

Prof. Zinsstag remains a field researcher and he will continue with his team and partners engaging in eco-health studies as deputy head of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and, with Afrique One-ASPIRE.