Once understood, One Health ought to be one of the most attractive, essential, and shared causes in modern philanthropy. It is global, interdisciplinary, scientifically compelling, urgent, and potentially transformational. It sits directly at the intersection of global health security, food systems, biodiversity, climate resilience, animal health, and environmental protection. It could be crucial in preventing pandemics, stabilizing ecosystems, protecting food systems, and reducing the economic shocks that can ripple across continents when diseases move from animals to humans, or humans to animals.
This is not simply a humanitarian argument. It is an investment argument. The World Bank estimates that prevention guided by One Health principles would cost roughly $10.3 billion to $11.5 billion annually, compared with roughly $30.1 billion a year to manage pandemics — and notes that prevention costs are less than 1% of the estimated economic cost of COVID-19 in 2020.
Implementing One Health at all levels of society should be an irresistible proposition for philanthropy. One Health is precisely the kind of sweeping, systems-level challenge that Silicon Valley donors often say they were born to solve; the kind of global public good that major foundations claim is central to their missions; and the kind of cross-sector coordination that large nonprofits routinely champion. Yet the philanthropic response remains remarkably fragmented.
The concept itself is built on the idea that human, animal, plant, and environmental health are inextricably interdependent. They cannot function or be addressed separately, though our current systems have evolved to operate that way. A virus in bats can find its way into livestock and/or into people. A drought can drive insects, wildlife, and people into new areas, changing disease patterns. Antibiotic misuse in many systems can accelerate antimicrobial resistance in both human and animal health hospitals. Deforestation, habitat fragmentation, changing land use, changing climate, floods and water scarcity, pollution, dust storms, and biodiversity loss can and do destabilize entire regions.
One Health thinking, action, and decision-making can best address these challenges. The logic and evidence for integrating knowledge and professionals across all relevant sectors to address these challenges is overwhelming, and the stakes are enormous.
There are important One Health grants, research programs, pandemic-prevention initiatives, and conservation projects. But few major philanthropic institutions have made integrated One Health a flagship priority on the scale of climate change, global public health, education, poverty, or energy. There is no obvious billionaire moonshot devoted to One Health. There is no dominant philanthropic institution whose defining mission is to build the global One Health infrastructure needed to prevent the next pandemic and strengthen the systems on which human, animal, and environmental health depend.
That is the blind spot. The logic is overwhelming. The funding architecture is not.
The World Health Organization (WHO) explicitly identifies these connections, noting that more than 60% of reported emerging infectious diseases globally originate in animals and that human activity and stressed ecosystems are creating new opportunities for diseases to emerge and spread. The Quadripartite One Health Partner organizations — WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) — have gone further.
Their One Health Joint Plan of Action identifies six interconnected priorities: strengthening One Health capacities; reducing emerging and re-emerging zoonotic threats; controlling endemic zoonotic, neglected tropical, and vector-borne diseases; improving food safety; combating antimicrobial resistance; and integrating the environment into One Health.
The international systems have therefore already answered the question, “does One Health matter?” The unanswered question is: “Who is going to finance it at the scale required?” And that question is becoming harder to ignore. In August 2026, the Quadripartite extended the One Health Joint Plan of Action through 2029, explicitly citing the need for sustained planning, implementation, and scaling of national One Health priorities.
The philanthropy problem
Part of the challenge is that One Health does not fit neatly into existing philanthropic silos. Donors tend to want to know who is responsible, who is accountable, and who will deliver results. They prefer one institution to write the grant proposal, one team to execute it, and a clear set of metrics to measure impact. That model works well for vaccines administered, schools built, forests protected, meals delivered, or patients treated.
One Health is different. Its greatest successes may be events that never happen. A pandemic prevented at the animal-human interface does not generate dramatic photographs. A wildlife surveillance system that detects a pathogen before it spreads globally may look like money spent on laboratories, veterinarians, data systems, and training. A healthy ecosystem that reduces the probability of zoonotic diseases that pass between animals and people does not produce a quarterly impact statistic. A functioning animal-health service may prevent human disease without anyone ever knowing that an outbreak was avoided.
This is philanthropy’s classic prevention problem, magnified across multiple sectors.
The World Bank has explicitly described One Health prevention as a global public good and warned of a cycle of “panic, neglect, and underinvestment”: resources surge after a crisis and then diminish when the immediate danger recedes. So close on the heels of COVID-19, we have very short memories. The paradox is striking: the better One Health works, the less visible its success may be.
That makes it difficult to sell — and precisely why philanthropy should step in.
The money exists. The organizing mechanism does not. Many wealthy individuals and private-sector institutions have the resources to integrate and fully implement One Health, to make it a priority. Major foundations fund global (human) health, climate change and health, food systems, biodiversity, pandemic preparedness, biosecurity, artificial intelligence, and scientific innovation. The pieces are already there. What is missing is a sufficiently large philanthropic effort that deliberately connects them.
Considering the leading institutions
The Gates Foundation remains one of the world’s largest philanthropic forces in global health, with current priorities including vaccines, maternal and child health, nutrition, and other global health interventions. It has funded One Health projects in the past — including work on diseases affecting both humans and livestock — but One Health is not currently presented as a flagship organizing strategy for the foundation today. It is mind-boggling why not!
The Wellcome Trust is investing more than £16 billion between 2022 and 2032 around three major global health challenges: infectious disease, mental health, and climate and health. It also funds specific One Health areas, including antimicrobial resistance, zoonotic disease research, and projects explicitly using One Health approaches. But again, the institution’s strategy is organized around these individual health challenges rather than One Health as an overarching philanthropic architecture. It doesn’t have a major One health portfolio or priority.
The Rockefeller Foundation has enormous experience in precisely the kind of systems transformation One Health requires. Its current work spans data systems, health, power, and climate; and its five-year strategy commits $1 billion to transforming energy, food, health, and finance systems. The Foundation has also previously funded One Health initiatives and conferences and has published a strategic vision arguing that One Health is central to resilient global health. Yet its current program structure is not organized around One Health as a flagship funding platform.
Open Philanthropy has made important commitments to biosafety, biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, including work on disease detection and countermeasures, emergency operations, and workforce development, though it is largely looking for high‑tech solutions.
Nor have large nonprofits such as Conservation International, CARE, Save the Children, Mercy Corps, and Médecins Sans Frontières, each with broad global reach and strong donor networks, built One Health programs at scale.
The larger funding picture reinforces the point. A 2026 CABI-led analysis of 5,488 One Health-labelled publications identified 642 distinct funders. Nearly 80% of acknowledged funding came from public-sector actors — national research councils, public science funders, government ministries and agencies, and multilaterals. NGOs and private-sector funders each accounted for only about 2% of acknowledged publications. The researchers specifically call for funding mechanisms that support cross-sector partnerships, longer timelines, prevention, resilience, and more equitable participation.
So, the issue is not that nobody is funding One Health. The challenge is that money is dispersed into institutional, disciplinary, and national silos while the problems themselves are integrated and interdependent. They cannot be approached separately as single, one-off projects. That is exactly the kind of market failure philanthropy is supposed to address.
Economic case stronger than philanthropic case
The economics should make this impossible to ignore. The World Bank estimates that $10.3–$11.5 billion a year could support prevention measures guided by One Health principles, including improvements in veterinary services, farm biosecurity, and reduction of deforestation in higher-risk countries. The same analysis estimates that the annual economic cost of managing pandemics is substantially higher. Earlier World Bank analysis estimated that investments in systems for preventing and controlling zoonotic diseases could generate extraordinarily high expected returns, with annual rates of return ranging from roughly 44% to 71% under scenarios in which a portion of mild pandemics could be prevented.
A 2024 systematic review of 97 studies of the economic value of One Health initiatives found positive economic value or returns in 78 studies. Importantly, the review also found that relatively few studies had rigorously demonstrated the additional value of a cross-sectoral One Health approach — highlighting both the promise of the field and the need for better economic evaluation. That last point is especially important for philanthropy.
One Health needs not only money, but investment architecture. Philanthropy could fund the economic evaluations, standardized metrics, data systems, demonstration projects, and country-level investment cases needed to make One Health legible to mainstream capital. The opportunity is therefore larger than simply writing grants. The opportunity is to build an investment architecture around prevention.
What to do?
This philanthropic vacuum is not inevitable. The obvious opportunity is to create a global One Health funding vehicle that gives major donors a credible entry point and provides what the field currently lacks: grant coordination, technical due diligence, financial oversight, common metrics, investment cases, convening power, and the ability to fund projects that cross traditional institutional boundaries. Such a vehicle could finance:
- Wildlife zoonotic disease surveillance and detection for Pandemic prevention at the animal-human-environment interface.
- Integrated environmental contamination surveillance.
- Veterinary, environmental health and public-health workforce development.
- Antimicrobial resistance detection and prevention across human, animal, and environmental systems.
- Food safety, Food Systems and Food Security surveillance and resilience
- Biodiversity and ecosystem interventions that reduce health risks.
- Climate-sensitive disease monitoring, remote sensing via satellites, and early-warning systems.
- Integrated and shared data infrastructures and interoperable disease detection systems
- Country-level One Health investment and strategic action plans.
- Research demonstrating the economic returns of prevention.
- Community-led and Indigenous approaches to today’s challenges.
- Scalable models that governments and development banks can subsequently finance.
The objective should not be to create yet another organization competing for attention. The objective should be to “connect” the organizations that already exist.
Why That Distinction Matters
WHO, FAO, UNEP, WOAH, the World Bank, national governments, universities, conservation, global-health and other non-profit organizations, veterinary institutions, and local communities already possess enormous expertise. What is missing is a sufficiently powerful philanthropic mechanism capable of connecting those assets around a coordinated, common investment thesis.
A first practical step could be a One Health Philanthropy Summit. The timing could hardly be better. The 9th World One Health Congress was held in Lisbon from September 4–7, 2026, bringing together more than 1,300 experts from 107 countries. Its program explicitly included One Health implementation and financing, preparedness, resilience, economic evaluation, and the role of the private sector. The Congress concluded with a global Call to Action urging greater recognition, financing, and implementation of One Health. That call remains open and at the time of this writing 120 organizations have signed on. The question now is what happens after the scientists and policymakers go home.
A philanthropic summit could bring together billionaires, major foundations, family offices, impact investors, development banks, corporations, scientists, conservation leaders, public-health institutions, and representatives from countries most exposed to emerging threats.
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The purpose must be concrete
How much should the world invest in One Health? Where should that money go? Who should manage it? What results should donors demand? And how can philanthropic capital leverage much larger public and private investments? A summit could establish an initial global investment target, identify high-priority funding gaps, commission a One Health investment case, establish common impact metrics, and create a mechanism for pooled philanthropic capital. That would turn One Health from an idea into an investable field.
A number of institutions may be positioned to initiate a coordinated One Health funds management process. WHO, FAO, UNEP and WOAH already possess the international legitimacy and technical infrastructure. The World Bank has demonstrated both the economic case for One Health and has experience financing One Health projects. Philanthropic foundations have the risk capital and convening power. Universities and scientific organizations can provide evidence and evaluation. No single institution needs to own this. What is needed is a collective, coordinated coalition willing to make the first call.
The Missing Billion
One Health implementation should not be viewed simply as another charitable cause competing for a slice of the philanthropic pie. It is a way of thinking and decision making that can enhance the value of investments that philanthropy, governments, businesses, and societies are already making.
But what good are billions invested in global human health if a new pathogen overwhelms health systems? What good are investments in food security if climate and animal diseases destabilize agricultural production? What good are conservation investments if human health is treated as separate from animal and ecosystem health? What good are pandemic vaccines developed after the pathogen has already emerged and spread if the risk could have been reduced upstream? One Health connects these questions and provides a strategy to address them. It is a global resilience strategy.
There is currently a striking mismatch between the scale of the need and the scale of the philanthropic response. The global institutional machinery is increasingly acknowledging One Health: the Quadripartite has extended its action plan through 2029; the World Bank has quantified the economic case for prevention; WHO has elevated the approach within global health security; and the international One Health community has explicitly called for more financing.
The science is no longer the question. The concept is no longer the question. The global need is no longer the question.
The missing ingredient is catalytic philanthropic capital organized around the whole problem rather than its individual pieces. The next pandemic, the next ecological shock, the next antimicrobial-resistance crisis, the next food-system disruption may already be taking shape somewhere at the human-animal-environment interface. Big Philanthropy has the resources to do something about it before the next crisis arrives.
The question is no longer whether One Health deserves serious philanthropic attention. The question is why it has not already received it. Where is Big Philanthropy? The time to act is now.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com
