Dr. William Karesh

Dr. William B. Karesh is the Executive Vice President for Health and Policy at EcoHealth Alliance. He serves as the president of the World Animal Health Organization (OIE) Working Group on Wildlife Diseases and also chairs the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Wildlife Health Specialist Group, a network of wildlife and health experts around the world. Dr. Karesh also serves on the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Health Regulations Roster of Experts focused on the human-animal interface and wildlife health. Currently, Dr. Karesh is the EPT Partner Liaison for the USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT-2 program, a >$120 million effort focused on predicting and preventing pandemic diseases. He is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dr. Karesh coined the term "One Health" in 2003 to describe the interdependence of healthy ecosystems, animals and people and has pioneered solutions-oriented initiatives with this concept as the guiding principle. International programs under his direction in over 45 countries have covered terrain from Argentina to Zambia and include efforts in the Congo Basin to reduce the impact of diseases such as Ebola, measles, and tuberculosis on humans and endangered species such as gorillas and chimpanzees, to global surveillance systems for emerging diseases.

In addition to his work in the private sector, Dr. Karesh has also worked for the USDA, DOD, DOI and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. Dr. Karesh is internationally recognized as an authority on the subject of animal and human health linkages and wildlife. He has published more than 165 scientific papers and numerous book chapters, and written for the Huffington Post and journals such as Foreign Affairs.