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Global One Health Academy

Announcing the 2025 Local Engagement Seed Grant Awardees

February 7, 2025

The Global One Health Academy is excited to announce the recipients of its first inaugural 2025 Local Engagement Seed Grants developed to support NC State students, postdocs, faculty, and staff in their One Health-relevant local engagement projects. The five selected projects will work to improve the health of individuals, communities, and ecosystems in North Carolina.

Empowering Local Communities: Enhancing Walkability in Rural NC Counties

  • PI: Aaron Hipp (CNR)
    Abstract: North Carolina State University is expanding its commitment to improving public health and addressing health disparities through the proposed Global One Health project. Building on the work of the CDC High Obesity Program (HOP) and the Walk Audit Guide: Communities Moving Together (2021), this initiative will develop and disseminate the Walk Audit Toolkit Part 2, an advanced resource aimed at empowering communities to enhance walkability, promote outdoor physical activity, and foster environmental resilience. Targeting rural and underserved populations in North Carolina, the toolkit will address critical barriers to walkability and outdoor physical activity, including limited infrastructure, socioeconomic challenges, and geographic dispersion.

    The enhanced toolkit will provide stakeholders—including public health officials, city planners, parks and recreation departments and community organizations—with actionable strategies, case studies, templates, and tools to implement sustainable policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) improvements. Dissemination efforts will include workshops, webinars, and partnerships, ensuring the toolkit’s accessibility and utility for diverse audiences.

    Through a collaborative, community-driven approach grounded in the Global One Health framework, the project will elevate NC State Extension’s leadership in promoting interdisciplinary health strategies. By fostering partnerships, providing training, and building community capacity, this initiative aims to address health inequities, enhance community infrastructure, and create healthier, more resilient environments, advancing the broader goals of public health and environmental sustainability.

Engaging in Microbiome Stewardship through Heirloom Collard Cultivation

  • PI: Mallory Choudoir (CALS)
  • Abstract: Healthy food systems are fundamentally rooted in soils which are home to complex microbial communities that carry out ecosystem functions essential for soil and crop health. Microbes link environmental health with the health of humans, plants, and animals. Therefore soil is foundational to the One Health concept. Human activities like intensive land use and climate change threaten soil microbes, and consequently, human health. Microbiome stewardship recognizes the importance of microbes in sustaining human and ecosystem health and emphasizes the need to conserve and protect them. Small farmers are uniquely positioned to develop principles of microbiome stewardship because small-scale producers are pillars of local food systems and are also leaders in developing agriculture practices for climate resiliency. North Carolina is home to a beautiful diversity of crops, and collards hold a central place on the table for Southern and Soul cuisine. The Heirloom Collard Project is a network of farmers, chefs, seed savers, gardeners, artists who engage in collard cultivation and storytelling. The goal of this project is to investigate the ecological relationships between soil microbial communities and collards, and how relationships may differ across farms and/or different collard varieties. We will measure microbial communities using amplicon sequencing approaches targeting 16S rRNA gene and ITS makers genes for bacterial and fungal taxa, respectively. Understanding the relationships between soil microbes, food, and farming practices will improve our ability to practice microbiome stewardship.

Genetic erosion in the Cape Fear River Basin: Testing the impacts of trace metal pollution and gene flow on ecosystem health

  • PIs: Alexandra Duffy (COS)
    • Lily Hughes (COS)
    • R. Brian Langerhans (COS)
  • Abstract: Freshwater pollution from chemical contaminants, such a trace metals, poses critical challenges for ecosystem stability, biodiversity, and human health. Contaminants may also drive contemporary evolution. Chronic exposure to sublethal levels of trace metals can lead to resistance or tolerance in some organisms, but and may also lead to “genetic erosion” – a reduction in genetic diversity. The ability of natural populations to adapt to future environmental changes is directly associated with the amount of standing genetic diversity, therefore, genetic erosion may negatively impact the long-term survival of populations. For this pilot study, we will leverage a unique livebearing fish system, the least killifish (Heterandria formosa), in the Cape Fear River system to test the “genetic erosion hypothesis”. Specifically, we will (Aim 1) use a metallomics approach to quantify the trace metal exposure in the water, sediment, and whole-body tissue of H. formosa across six locations within the Cape Fear River drainage; (Aim 2) use restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (RADSeq) to assess genetic diversity in response to contamination levels; (Aim 3) quantify variation in body shape and body condition. Our interdisciplinary team consists of investigators at various career stages spanning two Departments, including a dual affiliation with the North Carolina Natural Science Museum. We will use our preliminary data to write an NSF proposal for submission in Fall 2025. In addition to a federal grant proposal, this seed grant will support at least one peer-reviewed publication, training for two undergraduate students, and mentorship experience for at least one graduate student.

Piloting coproduced research for a coproduced resilience education program

  • PI: Kathryn Stevenson (CNR)
  • Abstract: Climate hazards pose complex health challenges, including environmental and mental health. Accordingly, resilience strategies that are multi-and inter-disciplinary may be beneficial. For example, in an education context, students benefit from programs that address not only their understanding of ecological impacts of climate change (e.g., flooding, poor water quality), but also support the mental health needs that climate disasters present. Since 2021, NC State and the Duke University Marine Lab Community Science Initiative have partnered with teachers to co-develop an interdisciplinary resilience education program that blends ecological, psychological, and community resilience principles, called Ready, Set, Resilience (RSR). RSR started in Carteret County in the context of Florence, Dorian, and Covid. We now also serve Durham and have just started to be invited to Western NC in the wake of Helene. A core value of RSR is centering teacher choice and voice. The result is a wonderfully diverse application of the program, which can be difficult to systematically evaluate. Drawing on participatory action research methods, we request funding to support teacher RSR Research Fellows to identify, prioritize, and develop measurement strategies for a research agenda associated with the curriculum teachers have co-developed. Teachers will serve as the creative and strategic engines, and a postdoc and/or graduate student will assist with implementing their vision through support developing and analyzing their measurement strategies. Research fellows will analyze and communicate findings to their fellow teachers, supporting a community-driven research agenda and communication plan.

Ripe for Revival: A Mobile Produce Market Approach to Advance Nutrition Security, Sustainability, and Health in Rural North Carolina

  • PIs: Basheerah Enahora (CALS)
    • Stephanie Jilcott-Pitts (East Carolina University)
    • Qiang Wu (East Carolina University)
  • Abstract: Increasing access to healthy foods is crucial to combating health disparities in rural communities. The Ripe for Revival mobile market, a non-profit eastern NC-based mobile market, seeks to improve healthy food access among those at greatest risk of food insecurity and diet-related chronic disease. By implementing vouchers at the mobile market, we will evaluate voucher redemption and nutrition-related program impacts (fruit and vegetable intake, food security, nutrition security) among voucher recipients. We will also assess the volume and dollars of local produce purchased at the mobile market. This project is poised to improve diet and health among rural residents in six NC counties and promote sustainable local food systems in North Carolina.