Dr. Brian Bird teaching a class

Course Leadership

Rx One Health is led by senior faculty and staff from the One Health Institute at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and the UC Davis School of Medicine. 

The course partners with non-governmental health and agriculture organizations and small-business enterprises working in communities where the course is taught.  Recruited instructors and facilitators are experts in their field who are passionate about their subjects and provide high-quality learning experiences.

Lead faculty

Jennifer Lane headshot

Jennifer Lane, DVM, MPH

UC Davis One Health Institute
Rx One Health Field Institute Director

Jennie leads Rx One Health Field Institute activities and is a field veterinarian with the One Health Institute.  She provides technical and logistical support to a variety of projects including the USAID One Health Workforce- Next Generation project.  She joined UC Davis in 2017 after completing a two year fellowship with the Congressional Hunger Center, where she was placed with Land O’Lakes International Development.  During the fellowship she provided technical support to a variety of USAID, USDA and BMGF funded projects working with livestock and small holder farmers, and researched the pathways of impact of livestock projects on household livelihood and nutrition outcomes.  She also co-led a year-long livestock, animal source foods and household nutrition learning series, in collaboration with ILRI and IFPRI.  In her free time, you'll find Jennie spending time with her family, unplugged in the wilderness, hiking, camping, or biking, working in her garden or attempting a fermentation project.  Leading RxOH is one of her favorite things about her job and she loves watching people discover the joys of seeing the natural world and becoming inspired stewards of our amazing planet. 

 

Woutrina Smith headshot

Woutrina Smith, BA, DVM, MPVM, PhD

UC Davis One Health Institute

Dr. Smith leads the multi-campus UCGHI Planetary Health Center of Expertise and has been part of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s One Health Institute since its inception. Originally from Alaska, Dr. Smith studied at Pomona College in Los Angeles, at School for Field Studies in Australia, and at UC Davis on her way to becoming a Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. Dr. Smith has One Health research projects in Africa and Asia, as well as in California, where multidisciplinary teams work together to solve complex population and planetary health problems in innovative ways. Dr. Smith has received funding from diverse sources including the National Institutes of Health, the US Agency for International Development, the US Department of Defense, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support her research and training endeavors.

Michael Wilkes headshot

Michael Wilkes, MD, MPH, PhD

UC Davis School of Medicine

Michael Wilkes is widely known for his efforts to introduce medical students to the humanistic side of being a physician, and for working tirelessly to include the public health and social sciences as part of training physicians. During his tenure as Vice Dean of the Medical School he lead the way toward enormous changes in medical education at UC Davis including the rural prime program, the college system of mentoring, a new education building, and a dramatic shift away from lectures toward small group and interactive learning. Wilkes introduced UC Davis' "Doctoring" curriculum, a series of classes and seminars for all four years of medical school. Topics within the curriculum include doctor- patient communication, clinical reasoning and end-of-life care, to name but a few. Dr. Wilkes has extensive experience in the development, management, and evaluation of eLearning technologies. In his current capacity as Director of Global Health he works locally with the UC Davis Vet and Nursing faculty and with medical and health sciences schools around the world as they seek to train the most capable health providers to address local health needs. He serves as a reviewer for many medical publications. He is the Director of the UC Davis Adolescent Clinic.

 
 

Brian Bird Head shotBrian Bird, PhD, DVM 

UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine

Dr. Bird is an Associate Director of the One Health Institute of the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California Davis. He is a veterinarian, rancher, and a virologist with expertise in viral hemorrhagic fever molecular pathogenesis, virus ecology, vaccines, and outbreak control and diagnostics. His laboratory has active research programs in California, Sierra Leone, DRC, Uganda, and Tanzania that involve both the animal and human health sectors to understand the factors underlying virus spillover from bats and rodents to people and to develop novel countermeasures ranging from vaccines to community-based risk mitigation efforts to stop outbreaks at their source. He is an inventor of novel vaccines currently under development for Rift Valley fever virus to protect both people and animals from this devastating mosquito-borne disease found across Africa and parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Dr. Bird is also serves as the focal point lead for One Health on the World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network Research group (WHO GOARN-R).