9th World One Health Congress (WOHC 2026)

Lara Marcolin, PhD student and member of the Biodiversity and Global Change Lab, recently attended the 9th World One Health Congress (WOHC 2026) in Lisbon, Portugal. This major international meeting brings together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to discuss emerging challenges and new perspectives in One Health. During the congress, Lara presented a poster on her latest research, now available as a preprint, entitled “Modelling the decadal expansion of West Nile virus in Italy: the role of climatic, anthropogenic, and macroecological drivers.” The study builds on a collaboration between the Biodiversity and Global Change Lab and researchers from the National Institute of Health, combining expertise from macroecology and epidemiology. By connecting these perspectives, the work moves beyond conventional approaches to infectious disease risk, exploring how climate, human pressures and biodiversity interact to shape the spread of WNV across Italy. WOHC 2026 was a great chance to meet researchers from different fields, exchange ideas, and explore new opportunities for collaboration, and to see how bringing ecology, biodiversity and public health together can help us better understand, and hopefully prevent, the spread of zoonotic diseases.