Dr. Cheryl Stroud, a veterinarian who received a master’s and Ph.D. in immunology and physiology from the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, has been recognized as an NC State Distinguished Alumni for her tireless work promoting the urgency of embracing and implementing One Health.

Dr. Stroud, who was the first post-DVM graduate student accepted into the NC State veterinary college graduate program, was honored along with other distinguished Wolfpack alumni at a ceremony Sept. 11 at the Talley Student Union. The event also celebrated, among other awards, the university’s Watauga medal winners and Foundation Board award winners.

“I am honored, not just for myself, but for the awareness this brings to One Health,” says Stroud, who also was in the first graduating veterinary class at Mississippi State University in 1981. “It’s all of us pulling together that really drives the One Health movement. This award is another way to raise awareness of the One Health way of thinking about the interdependence of humans, other animals, plants and the environment, so I’m really excited.”

Since 2013, Stroud has served as executive director of the One Health Commission, a nonprofit chartered in Washington, D.C., and headquartered in North Carolina. One Health is described as an interdisciplinary approach to the world that recognizes how human, animal and environmental health are interdependent.

The commission works to connect One Health stakeholders and create networks and action teams that promote One Health and One Health issues, with the ultimate goal of making this holistic way of thinking, acting and decision-making the default way of doing business at all levels of academia, government, policy and research. In 2016, the commission spearheaded creation of a global One Health Day that is celebrated around the world every Nov. 3.

“The importance of One Health, referred to in earlier days as One Medicine, was often overlooked until the early 2000s,” says Dr. Kathryn Meurs, the Randall B. Terry Jr. Dean of the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine. “Dr. Stroud’s deep passion and respect for the interconnections between human, animal and environmental health led to the development of much of the One Health infrastructure in North Carolina that still exists today. Her efforts became the foundation on which we built many of our existing regional One Health programs and a much stronger connection between regional medical schools, NC State College of Veterinary Medicine and environmental researchers and agencies.”

Mount Everest Awaits

Stroud’s path to One Health advocate began on her family’s small Mississippi farm, where she was surrounded by cows, horses, cats and dogs. At age 13 or so, she told her mother that she wanted  to be a veterinarian, to which her mother replied, “Oh, you don’t want to do that. Girls don’t do that.” Today, nearly 70 percent of veterinary practitioners are women.

When she headed to college, Stroud majored in General Science with a chemistry emphasis with plans to go to medical school, but then Mississippi opened its veterinary college, and in 1978 she was accepted to its inaugural graduating class instead, graduating in 1981.

After taking her first veterinary job at a large and small animal practice in North Carolina, in 1982 she met fellow veterinarian Donald Simmons at a local professional meeting, and he invited her to tour the state’s new veterinary school where he was a faculty member. Simmons, a poultry science researcher, is considered one of the founding fathers of the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, which enrolled its first class in 1981. 

When Stroud took him up on the tour offer, he introduced her to the faculty member who became a major adviser for her master’s degree. Simmons also later became Stroud’s husband.

“My master’s adviser asked, ‘Why do you want to do a Ph.D., Cheryl?’” Stroud says. “And I told her, ‘It’s like Mount Everest. Because it’s there.’”

By then, Stroud says, she had come to understand the important differences between the clinical medicine she was practicing and the research she wanted to do. With the graduate degrees, she hoped she could marry the two professional backgrounds — an idea that she believes, in the long run, she accomplished.

“I feel like everything I’ve done in my career was preparing me for the One Health work that I do today, though it didn’t always make sense at the time,” says Stroud, who, after receiving her Ph.D. at NC State, became a post-doctoral research fellow at Pennsylvania State University “One of the most unconventional positions I ever had  was as a veterinarian with a Ph.D. in endocrine physiology working in an anthropology department setting up a hormone research lab to do reproductive hormone studies in populations of women around the world.”

The belief that the health of people, other animals and the earth are inseparable is an ancient concept practiced by indigenous people everywhere. As our education systems forced us into silos, the concept re-emerged and was championed early on by the veterinary community. Dr. Calvin Schwabe, a veterinarian who studied zoonotic parasitic diseases, coined the term “One Medicine,” and Dr. James Steele, who was the first veterinarian to work at the CDC, established the first Veterinary Public Health Division at that agency in 1947, essentially creating the field of veterinary public health. The CDC created its first One Health Office in 2008.

The story of how Stroud ultimately ended up blazing a trail in One Health, however, begins closer to home, again with her mother.

As Stroud was following emerging conversations about One Health in veterinary medical journals in the early 2000s, her mother was diagnosed with a degenerative neurologic disease. 

“What really brought it home for me is that the more I learned about Lyme disease and other tick-borne zoonotic diseases — you see, my mother was a big outdoors person — I realized she could easily have contracted Lyme disease or Bartonella  hat could have contributed to her degenerative neurological situation,” she says. “I was concerned that something like that could be going on with her but, at the time, diagnostics for Lyme and bartonella were not very progressed.”

As she became more involved in One Health conversations, it occurred to her that One Health research across the animal and human health worlds could help develop better tests to help people suffering from diseases that are difficult to diagnose, she says. 

After Simmons’ career took the couple to Illinois for more than a decade, they returned to North Carolina in 2008 — Simmons to retire from his position as director of the American Veterinary Medication Association’s Education and Research Division and Stroud to discover and build upon her passion for advocating the importance of One Health initiatives, education and policies.

North Carolina Impact

In 2010, Stroud brought together North Carolina stakeholders in human, other animal, public and environmental health and spearheaded the creation of the NC One Health Collaborative. Under her leadership, the group launched a One Health course cross-listed at Duke, UNC and NC State that is still leading interdisciplinary discussion sessions after 15 years.

“It’s just so gratifying because there are young people who come to that course from all disciplines, from nursing, public health, environmental health, social sciences, entomology, you name it,” she says. “That my colleagues from Duke, UNC and NC State have kept that course that we started together going for all these years after I stepped away to lead the One Health Commission has just been phenomenally fulfilling.”

Now, Stroud is humbled that her One Health work has led NC State to honor her as a Distinguished Alumni. Looking back, she says her time as a post-DVM NC State graduate student was life-changing because it helped her understand the different worlds of research and clinical medicine and prepared her to interact comfortably in both those worlds. 

“In clinical medicine, you’re thinking about all the physiological systems and how they contribute or respond to disease,” she says. “In research, you’re honing in on this amino acid in this strand of DNA, really focusing deeply on narrow questions. Both approaches are absolutely necessary. Marrying them is actually very powerful and prepared me to walk in both worlds in my One Health work ”

Which is why she was happy she got to celebrate at the NC State event with her husband and adult children.

“My poor family,” she says with a laugh. “They’ve watched and supported my  passionate One Health work for so many years, even when they didn’t really understand what it was all about, and now Mom’s getting an award? They’re like, what?”