All-In Approach: Purdue’s One Health Pillar

Isabella Tobin:

You are listening to Living the Ph-arm Life, the official podcast of Purdue University’s College of Pharmacy. I’m your host, Isabella Tobin, a PharmD candidate with a passion for telling the stories of our college’s phenomenal and loyal students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends who persistently pursue excellence in all they do.

Eric Barker, Jeannie and Jim Chaney Dean of Pharmacy, was promoted to vice President for health affairs at Purdue, effective July 1st, 2024, putting him at the helm of the university’s recently announced One Health Initiative. In this episode of Living the Pharm Life, Barker talks about the initiative which brings together all health related focus areas at Purdue to expand knowledge of human, animal and environmental well-being. The initiative better positions the university to strategically transform the future of health affairs by aligning health and life science programs, catalyzing health research, and strengthening industry and clinical connections.

Dr. Eric Barker, welcome back to Living the Pharm Life. There have been a lot of positive changes in your world since you were last here, including the implementation of Purdue One Health. Could you tell us more about it?

Dean Eric Barker:

Absolutely. First, thanks for the opportunity to be here. Never a dull day at Purdue University. Always something exciting going on in the most recent announcement around Purdue’s One Health pillar. It’s just another example of how I think our university is trying to lead in a variety of areas. One Health is defined by the CDC and the World Health Organization as really that work that functions at the intersection of human, animal and plant health, factoring in environmental factors on health along the way. And so it is our hope that we will begin to strengthen the ties across those disciplines, humans, animals, plants. And as we think about our academic programs for the future, as we think about the areas in research that we want to invest in, how we can strengthen that collaboration and that intersection between human animals and plant health, all for the sake of improving health overall.

Isabella Tobin:

Yeah, that’s really exciting and I think that has such a big impact on just the world as a whole. How is Purdue specifically in a position for this initiative?

Dean Eric Barker:

Well, first, I think the culture of Purdue University sets us up to really be successful, and that culture is one of collaboration. Across this campus, we have faculty interacting with one another in a very crossdisciplinary and interdisciplinary manner in terms of academic programs and research already. And so we’re building on foundation of a collaborative culture that will propel us to be able to work at those intersections of human, animal and plant health. In addition, the other strength that we have are the disciplines that we have represented on our campus, obviously engineering and particularly biomedical engineering and chemical engineering. But when we really think about the primary One Health disciplines, we have the College of Veterinary Medicine, we have the College of Health and Human Sciences, which has a whole host of health-related professions and health-focused and medical-focused individuals, as well as the College of Pharmacy, and our College of Science with our departments of biological sciences and chemistry. And so when you think about the disciplines that we have represented on our campus, we really have an opportunity to work at that intersection of human, animal and plant health.

Isabella Tobin:

Yeah, this is very exciting, especially for students who are in these fields. How do you see this initiative impacting our academic programs?

Dean Eric Barker:

One of the things that we’ll be talking a lot about is how we can be more future-focused, and I think maybe we’ll talk about that along the way, but we need to be thinking about the academic programs to meet the needs of the students who will be coming to us over the next 5, 10 and 15 years. And I think as we look at the workforce development needs, as we think about the disciplines and how they’re advancing, more and more, there is going to be a need for our graduates to be able to function working at that intersection of human animal and plant health to understand the cross-disciplinary nature and the needs across those disciplines. And so we will begin to think about new future-focused academic programs to develop new programs that are really cross-disciplinary that transcend one college and really prepare students in a really robust way for the jobs that are ahead of them.

I think the other thing that we’re really focused on is being student-centric. And so, again, what does that mean for student success, both here while they’re at Purdue, but also as they want to prepare themselves for what’s next when they leave Purdue? And so one of the things I’ve been talking about is high school seniors right now will come to us next fall, a year from now, and they will graduate four years after that. That means they’re entering the workforce at five years from now at minimum. Think about how the world has changed over the past five years. We’ve gone through a global pandemic and that really accelerated a lot of change and that pace of change really hasn’t slowed down. And so we need to be thinking, again, about what’s on the horizon and how we best prepare our students to be student-centric and to be future-focused.

Isabella Tobin:

Yeah, that’s fantastic and I completely agree with that. I know that future-focus is one of my big things, especially here at Purdue. That’s kind of why I came to Purdue is because I love how we put such an emphasis on the future and on these continual opportunities to improve.

Dean Eric Barker:

So as you think about the student perspective and you hear about One Health and that opportunity to interact, again, humans, animals, plants, environment as it relates to health, what most excites you? Are there areas that you hear about that you see from your lens as a student that you think Purdue ought to be focused on?

Isabella Tobin:

I’m very excited about the ability to just learn new and different things. I came to Purdue because we have so many different opportunities here, especially non-traditional opportunities that I might not have had if I went to a different college of pharmacy. And I think the One Health Initiative with human, animals and plants, I think that’s going to open up a whole new realm of opportunities, especially for students who are interested in pursuing a non-traditional path or even just expanding the lens of the traditional pathways we already have existing.

Dean Eric Barker:

I’m trying to remember, have you had experience in the nuclear pharmacy and radiopharmaceutical area?

Isabella Tobin:

Yes,

Dean Eric Barker:

So that’s an area for us that is really a high priority. It is very cross-disciplinary. It requires radioactive chemistry, nuclear physics, nuclear pharmacy, and of course we have the oldest and largest nuclear pharmacy program in the country, but it is now shifting to these new radiopharmaceuticals that are not just for imaging and diagnosis, but for treatment of disease. And so we’re developing a new master’s program in radiopharmaceuticals to meet a workforce need that is growing globally, but more importantly is growing by leaps and bounds here in central Indiana in and around Indianapolis. There’s somewhere around 15 companies in and around Indianapolis in this radiopharmaceutical radio treatment space. And that’s a cross-disciplinary degree that we’ll have to focus on humans, animals, and environment as we think about training and preparing students to work in that industry.

Isabella Tobin:

Yeah, I’m very excited about just the boom of radioactivity that’s happening in the workforce. I was trying not to bring it up because I know I bring it up a lot. And I had volunteered at an event helping high school students look at the College of Pharmacy, and I talked about nuclear pharmacy a lot to all of them. So I was trying to hold myself back from bringing it up today, but I’m so glad you mentioned it because clearly, clearly that’s my passion.

Dean Eric Barker:

Well, it’s an area that we’re really excited about and it’s going to be one of our College of Pharmacy’s first programs in Indianapolis as we build out the Purdue University in Indianapolis presence. And so we’re real excited about the radiopharmaceutical programs.

Isabella Tobin:

Yeah, fantastic. I’m also very excited about it. Speaking of other programs that we have, we have a lot of research programs here at Purdue. How do you see those being impacted by the One Health Initiative?

Dean Eric Barker:

Again, we’re building off this spirit and culture of collaboration on our campus that already exists, and so working with our executive vice president for research, Dr. Karen Plaut, we’ve been really thinking about what are the research areas that allow us to work at that intersection? And also, as we think about recruiting new faculty for the campus, again, across many different colleges, how do we create cohorts or teams of faculty that work in these general areas that are really thematically around One Health? And so one of those is in the area of what we’d call microbiome. Many people know about the bacteria that live in our gut, for example, that help with digestion of food, very important for the normal functions of our bodies, but we now understand that there are microbes in our environment, they’re in the soil that influence plants which influence influences our food supply. We know that there are microbes that live on our skin that are important for, again, normal function of skin. And so this unseen world that exists on us, in us and around us is really critical to the overall health of humans, animals, and plants.

And so we’re wanting to build up a larger group of individuals in this microbiome space. This also links to the growing concern around antimicrobial resistance that these bacteria are developing resistance to the traditional antibiotics that we normally had. And so looking at new ways to control that microbiome, looking at antimicrobial resistance. And really, again, it’s about the biology, the pharmacology, the chemistry around that microbial world that influences health is one area that we’re excited about.

The other one that we’re really focused on for the future is artificial intelligence and machine learning. There is no question that the AI revolution is here. Over the next decade, we’re going to see extraordinary changes in healthcare and basic science discovery, much of drug discovery now. Basic, what we would’ve called early stage drug discovery is all done through artificial intelligence now. And so we’ll build a cohort of faculty that are thinking about how AI machine learning are going to help in the development of new treatments.

We’re going to think about AI and data analytics as it relates to health overall. We could imagine a time when we take multiple data streams that are looking at overall plant health in crops, in landscape plants, and taking all of that data with animal testing data that occurs at places like our animal disease diagnostic lab in our College of Veterinary medicine, as well as human data on human health. And if we were to train an AI algorithm to constantly monitor those data streams for hints or clues of emerging threats to animal health, human health, plant health, we could in a much more proactive way intervene to prevent those threats from growing into something that really does threaten overall health of the planet. And so we’re thinking about new ways to do data analytics to enhance health.

The last area that we’re really excited about is probably an area around biotechnology and computational genomics. This is advanced genetic techniques that is important for plants, it’s important for animals, and certainly going to be very important for humans as we see the advancement of cell and gene therapies to treat diseases that we could never treat before. And so we want to build a cohort of faculty here that are doing research in computational genomics, in advanced genetic techniques that all feeds this underlying technology that is important to the biotechnology sector. And that’s another sector that’s really growing here in central Indiana, the biotech sector. And so there’s workforce needs there, and so as we train our students here, our undergraduate professional and graduate students, they’re going to be prepared to enter that workforce that is really directly impacting the economy of the state of Indiana.

Isabella Tobin:

Yeah, this is so exciting. I love how as you’re talking about the future, I’m kind of thinking about the past and how 200 years ago, this wouldn’t even have been a thought. Even 100 years ago, this would’ve been science fiction. 50 years ago, science fiction. So I think it’s just so exciting to see how fast everything is moving, thinking about how five years ago, like you said, seniors in high school… I was a senior in high school five years ago, and I never would’ve expected these advancements. So I’m very excited to see what happens in these three fields in the next five years.

Speaking of change, I know the Purdue University campus has changed so much, even the last year, last five years. Are there any new facilities we can expect with this project and what would that look like?

Dean Eric Barker:

Well, first, we’re very excited that the new nursing pharmacy education building is underway. That’ll provide really cutting edge, state-of-the-art educational spaces for human clinical education training. And so that’s really important. We’ve got the new hospital for the veterinary college as well, and so that’ll be really a key instrument for advancing education on the vet side of things.

On the research side, the Board of Trustees has approved a plan that would move a project that is now called the Life Sciences Research Building. It’s really designed to be a very interdisciplinary on south campus. That would be the number one ask to the state of Indiana in this next budget cycle. And so $170 million project, new facility that would be against state-of-the-art open Lab concepts to allow for growth expansion and contraction of research groups depending on funding. And so the Life Sciences Research Building is the top of the priority list right now.

It would become a major home for the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research. The Purdue Institute for Cancer Research is one of just a handful of basic science centers focused on cancer that are supported by the National Cancer Institute, the NCI. And so we have this NCI-designated Cancer Institute here. They need new facilities to allow them to grow and expand. And so a large chunk of the new Life Sciences Research Building will be for the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research, but that’s phase one. And so we’re really conceiving a multi-phase project that starts with this new facility, opens up spaces in other areas, including the Hansen Life Sciences Research Building, that would then allow us to do not just a renovation, but a transformation of the Hansen Life Sciences Building for additional new space.

And so as we think about existing faculty here, but also as we’re trying to recruit these faculty that I’ve been talking about, we need great new space. And so we have a challenge here with both quantity and quality of research space. And this first project, the Life Sciences Research Building, will put us on a path to really addressing the research facility needs that we have across the campus. And really, as we’ve conceived it, this will impact colleges faculty in probably five, six, seven different colleges that all will be housed in one of these new facilities across campus that we’re going to be able to either build or transform. And so lots of excitement there around research facilities as well.

Isabella Tobin:

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. As a land-grant university, Purdue has a mission to help the community that’s around us. How do you see the One Health Initiative supporting this mission?

Dean Eric Barker:

Well, I’m glad you brought that up because in addition to education and academic programs and research, the third element that is embedded in our land-grant mission is our community engagement, and sometimes we refer to it as extension. As the land-grant university in the state of Indiana, we have a presence in all 92 counties through our extension offices. We have health extension already embedded there in place, and so we’ll have an opportunity to grow our health extension programs. And we really are thinking about the programming that exists around the health extension already.

So we have numerous projects. We have the HEAL Grant, it’s led by Dr. Jerome Adams, former US Surgeon General, and the director of the HEAL Project Hollywood. HEAL stands for Health Enhancement and Learning. It’s a grant that’s really designed to begin to work locally with county health departments to build them up, to provide great opportunities to enhance what they do to learn from one another. There are counties, surrounding counties here to Tippecanoe County where Purdue is located, there is a county that has no primary healthcare provider, not one. This is a major health disparity as it relates to rural healthcare. And so the HEAL Grant is designed to work with those county health departments to allow them to achieve better outcomes for their citizens in those areas. So we’re going to be thinking about ways that we scale, what we learn through the HEAL Project to the other counties within the state.

We also have the Center for Rural and Migrant Health in the College of Health and Human Sciences. This is a center that is really focused, again, on capacity building for these rural communities where there are gaps in delivery of primary healthcare. And so another opportunity for us to work with our communities to build healthier communities.

On the urban side of things, we’re excited about the opportunity to partner with what’s known as the new Indy Health District. You can find information at the indyhealthdistrict.org, and it’s really a region of five neighborhoods that are north of the new IU Health Hospital, just bordering Meridian Street, going north and the creek or the river that run up to the west. And so it’s an opportunity to think about how we build healthy communities in an urban environment and how we can partner with those neighborhoods to build healthy habits, to learn about the healthy health challenges that they have in those neighborhoods.

In some of those neighborhoods, the life expectancy of individuals that live in those neighborhoods is 10 or 20 years less than other neighborhoods in and around Indianapolis. Why is that? And what can we do to work together with our partners, including IU Health and the other health systems in and around Indianapolis, as well as other universities and colleges in and around Indianapolis that we work together to become a model of a healthy urban community. And so we’re excited about the opportunity to work with the Indy Health District.

And then, on the global side of the house, we’ve had a long-standing relationship here at Purdue with a program known as AMPATH, and it is in Kenya is where it started about 20 years ago. AMPATH stands for Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare, and it is a program that started really around HIV treatment in Africa. It is grown by leaps and bounds, and now AMPATH programming exists in other countries in Africa, not just Kenya. Had a chance this past June to visit the program in Eldoret, Kenya, and it is One Health in Action.

From the Purdue side of the house, while we were there, certainly the College of Pharmacy has a presence there in delivering healthcare and thinking about models of healthcare. But as we went out into rural Kenya, there was a presence of Purdue Agriculture to help with plant health and crops. There was a presence there to think about microfinance and economic impact in these rural areas in Kenya to help build capacity and training for the citizens who live there.

Then, in Eldoret, the city, we go to the Tamani Innovation Children’s Center. There’s Purdue Engineering at work with these street youth, and this is a program that is a residential program for children, kids living on the street. They bring them in. They live in the Tamani Children’s Center for 18 months. While they’re there, they are trained, they’re given opportunities to develop skills. It could be electrical, it can be automotive, hair and beauty. There are just some computer skills. After 18 months, they graduate, they have a skill set. 95% of them have jobs. And over 18 months, they go from living on the street to having jobs, well-paying jobs in Eldoret.

And so it’s a program that has been wildly successful. It is an amazing program there. And so it really speaks to the need as we think about health and wellness, that we are not just thinking about delivery of healthcare, but all the other pieces, nutrition, jobs, employment. And so AMPATH is an example of One Health in action from standpoint. And we want to get other colleges at Purdue involved with AMPATH, college of Veterinary Medicine, college of Health and Human Sciences, so that we’re really thinking about how we do One Health on a global scale and really provide new opportunities for our students across the globe.

Isabella Tobin:

This is absolutely incredible. I love hearing about how this initiative will impact our campus, our state, and the entire world. What are some of the short-term and long-term goals for this initiative, and how will it impact everyone from current students to our seasoned graduates?

Dean Eric Barker:

Well, first, we’re looking at how we recruit faculty into teams to support One Health Initiatives that we’ve already talked about, and then it’s thinking about academic programs. And so we’ve talked about the radiopharmaceutical program, cross-disciplinary program.

One of the things that we wanted to be able to offer is a One Health certificate so that really students in any of our academic degree programs, and again, I’m open to whether it’s undergraduate, graduate, professional students, but really they would have an opportunity to complete a One Health certificate so that they could really and truly understand the principles of One Health, the principles of working at the intersections of human, animal and plant health. And so getting that certificate off the ground is one of our first priorities so that we begin to impact students who are here and then, of course, the students who are coming. And then really getting into these conversations across the colleges to think about where are the sweet spots for Purdue University to develop some new cross-disciplinary academic programs that will benefit the students who are coming to us.

Isabella Tobin:

Yeah, that’s fantastic. How do you see it benefiting people who have already graduated from Purdue?

Dean Eric Barker:

The One Health certificate that I just mentioned, I think we could conceive of standing it up on Purdue online so that really any graduate, anyone really anywhere who wanted to learn about One Health could take the One Health certificate and add that to their credentials, even post-graduate. And so that’s one way that we’ll think about it through Purdue online, new programming that functions at that One Health in that One Health space. Also, will be certainly being very deliberate about offerings around One Health at alumni events, particularly things like the President’s Council back to class programming that happens in the fall and the spring. And so we’ll want to be sure that we’re highlighting and featuring One Health concepts, One Health-related content at those back to school, back to class rather programs that alumni come to.

And then, lastly, one of the ways that alumni can be involved, particularly those in the current workforce, is participate in advisory councils, participate in opportunities to give us feedback, and then be available to support students both through experiential education, through co-ops, internships, opening doors for students in their companies to come and get experience working. We’ll call it working while Learning. And that’s one of the areas that we really want to grow in around Purdue University in Indianapolis, and that is this working while learning idea. And so as our alumni who are in those industries that are working in this One Health space can open up doors for co-ops and internships for our students, that’s another way to contribute to moving this initiative forward on our campus.

Isabella Tobin:

Yeah, I think that’s great. I know that for myself, my career would not be the same if I hadn’t had working while learning opportunities. So I love that those will be afforded to more students in the future.

I have one last question for you. So as you know, being on here before, I like to ask a fun question at the end. We’ve been talking a lot about the future and predictions for the future, what’s on the horizon. So my question for you is, what everyday object do you think we’ll be obsolete in 20 years?

Dean Eric Barker:

It’s a really interesting question, and I began to think about, over the last 20 years, what’s become obsolete. Landline cell phones seem to have become obsolete. Fax machines. Though, oddly enough, healthcare still uses fax machines a lot.

Isabella Tobin:

Yeah, holding onto those fax machines.

Dean Eric Barker:

And so you would think in almost every other sector they’ve become obsolete for good reason, but not in healthcare. As I look, what are the signals? So one, I’m going to talk about some things I think generally society-wise, and then I think in the healthcare space. First, print media is probably going to become fairly obsolete. Magazines, print newspapers I think we’re already seeing that dwindling significantly, and there’ll be new opportunities to consume that content. I think, in many parts of the world, we’ve already gone cashless. And so I think there’s a strong likelihood, though I know there are a lot of folks that will go kicking and screaming against the use of digital currency, but I think the odds are pretty high that over the next two decades we’ll move to a largely cashless society. Again, there are cultures in the world, for example, that are already now about 99% cashless. And so I think that’s likely.

On the medical and the healthcare front. Traditional vaccines. I got my flu shot this morning, so everybody needs to go get their flu shot, but I got my flu shot this morning, a very traditional vaccine, but there are going to be new ways to vaccinate against a variety of diseases. And so traditional vaccines as we know it, I think over the next two decades are going to largely go away. And I think in-person doctor visits, I bet over half our doctor visits, our physician visits or visits with primary care will shift to some sort of digital means. And so I think that’s another big shift that will open up capacity and will also provide access to healthcare, especially in rural areas. Oftentimes we don’t think about internet access as being a health equity issue. Internet access is absolutely a health equity issue because if folks in rural communities don’t have access to high-speed internet, they can’t engage in internet telehealth visits with their primary care providers. And so it’s important that we think about getting internet really in broadband in all of our rural communities for that reason.

Lastly, I think there are some chronic diseases that the traditional treatments will become obsolete over the next two decades. So this is a risky prediction here, but I think traditional insulin treatment for diabetes, for example, will become obsolete. There are already incredible treatments that cure diabetes, cell and gene therapy-based treatments, many of which are on the verge of being approved by the FDA. Once that happens, the need for traditional insulin will largely go away. We’ll probably see some levels of continuous glucose monitors, but even those devices are going to be rapidly advancing in a way that the current versions will be obsolete.

And so I think one of the things in healthcare that we’ll see over the next two decades is certain chronic diseases, particularly I’m going to pick on diabetes, that the traditional treatments that we have typically had will become obsolete. And that is an extraordinary accomplishment for all of us. And so I think that’s really, really exciting to think about that we’ll be able to cure diseases that had no treatments. We’ll be able to cure diseases that had treatments that were costly. And so as we look at the future of medicine and the future of health, whether it be humans, whether it be animals, whether it be plants, our ability to embed and utilize technology in these disciplines is going to advance us in ways that will really make us all healthier. And that is, I think, realizing the full potential of One Health.

Isabella Tobin:

Yeah. Well, this has been a very exciting podcast. I think I speak for all of our audience when I say you’ve given a lot to think about and a lot to look forward to. Thank you so much for being here today.

Dean Eric Barker:

Thank you.