World Health Organization Launches Global Campaign to 'Stand with Science' at Lyon Summit

LYON, France — Under the bright lights of a riverside conference center on Sunday, presidents, prime ministers and diplomats filed past blue‑and‑white banners carrying a simple instruction: “Together for health. Stand with science.”

Across town in Lyon’s Parc de la Tête d’Or, children lined up to pet vaccinated dogs and peer at plastic models of bacteria in a “village of discoveries” billed as a One Health festival. The dual scenes — high diplomacy inside, public fair outside — underscored the ambition behind this year’s World Health Day.

On April 6, the World Health Organization formally launched World Health Day 2026 with a yearlong campaign built around that slogan. Timed to the agency’s founding anniversary on April 7, the effort is being paired with an International One Health Summit in Lyon, convened by WHO and France as a flagship event of France’s presidency of the Group of Seven.

Together, the campaign and summit are meant to turn a contested idea — trust in science, and in particular a “One Health” approach that links human, animal and environmental health — into concrete policies on pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, climate and food systems.

A bet on science in an age of doubt

World Health Day has carried themes from “Health for All” to “My health, my right” over the past decade. This year’s focus on science is more pointed.

“Science is one of humanity’s most powerful tools for improving health and saving lives,” WHO Director‑General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement announcing the campaign on April 6 from Geneva. He pointed to vaccines, penicillin, medical imaging and genome sequencing as advances that have helped drive global life expectancy upward over the past century.

WHO is linking those gains to hard numbers. Since 2000, global maternal mortality has fallen by more than 40%, and deaths among children younger than 5 have been cut by more than half. The agency estimates that immunization has averted more than 154 million deaths over the past 50 years, with measles vaccine alone credited with saving more than 90 million children.

The campaign’s message is not only celebratory. It comes after years in which scientific institutions, and WHO itself, have been attacked and second‑guessed over the handling of the COVID‑19 pandemic. Conspiracy theories about vaccines, lockdowns and the virus’s origins spread faster than many governments could respond.

“Science helps transform uncertainty into understanding,” said Sylvie Briand, WHO’s chief scientist, in the same statement. “Without rigorous scientific inquiry, societies risk being misled, wasting resources on ineffective or even harmful treatments.” She urged governments, researchers and the public to “stand together with science” to sustain and strengthen collaboration.

WHO is tailoring its call to different audiences. For governments, the campaign urges commitments to “science‑based policy” and investment in research, including in areas such as surveillance systems and laboratory capacity. For scientists and the agency’s 800‑plus collaborating centers, the message is to “activate, explain, lead” by making evidence accessible and countering misinformation. Health workers are urged to act as “ambassadors of science” in their communities, while the public is invited to “Ask. Share. Stand with science,” including through the hashtags #StandWithScience and #WorldHealthDay.

One Health moves to the top table

The Lyon summit is intended to give those themes political weight.

Running from April 5 to 7, the International One Health Summit is co‑hosted by the French government and WHO, along with the Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.N. Environment Programme and the World Organisation for Animal Health. France has cast it as a “historic mobilization for the health of the living planet” and a centerpiece of its G7 presidency.

Organizers say leaders or senior officials from roughly 40 countries, along with international agencies, scientists, city governments, civil society groups and youth representatives, are taking part in the high‑level day on April 7.

They are meeting against a stark backdrop. WHO estimates that about 60% of emerging infectious diseases reported worldwide come from animals, and that more than 30 new human pathogens have been identified in the past three decades, roughly three‑quarters of them zoonotic — originating in animals before jumping to people. Since 2003, pandemics and other One Health‑related threats are estimated to have caused more than 15 million deaths and around $4 trillion in economic losses.

Antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, is another central concern. WHO says drug‑resistant bacterial infections directly caused 1.27 million deaths in 2019 and were associated with nearly 5 million deaths overall, making AMR a leading cause of mortality worldwide.

The Lyon summit is structured around four themes: antimicrobial resistance; zoonotic and vector‑borne diseases; sustainable food systems “from soil to plate”; and pollution and environmental exposures. According to the program, the goals include reshaping institutional frameworks to embed a “One Health culture,” strengthening health and surveillance systems across sectors, and mobilizing public and private investment.

The gathering also serves as a showcase for the so‑called Quadripartite partnership — WHO, FAO, UNEP and WOAH — which adopted a joint One Health plan of action for 2022 to 2026. WHO is due to assume the chair of that partnership on April 8, immediately after the summit.

French officials are linking One Health to a wider diplomatic agenda that includes implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, negotiating a global treaty on plastic pollution and finalizing a pandemic accord now under discussion in Geneva. A national roadmap on antimicrobial resistance, updated through 2030, is another domestic anchor.

One Health, the French environment ministry has argued, should act as a “compass for public policies based on validated scientific data,” guiding choices in agriculture, urban planning, trade and environmental regulation as well as health.

WHO’s scientific network on display

The events in Lyon extend beyond the summit itself. On April 7, WHO is opening the first Global Forum of WHO Collaborating Centres, bringing representatives from more than 800 institutions in over 80 countries to the city’s Gerland district and the new WHO Academy campus.

Those centers — universities, public health institutes, laboratories and research agencies designated by WHO — form what the organization describes as its scientific backbone. The three‑day forum aims to align their work with WHO’s 14th General Programme of Work, the four‑year strategy that will guide the agency’s priorities, and to produce a shared roadmap for future collaboration on emerging threats.

In parallel, a One Health Festival is unfolding in Lyon and other locations from mid‑March to mid‑May. French research institutes and local authorities have organized more than 170 “satellite events,” from technical workshops on pathogen surveillance to public screenings and educational activities.

Among WHO‑linked side events are sessions on preventing yellow fever spillover in urban areas, drawing lessons from mosquito‑borne diseases for lower‑income countries’ preparedness, community‑based rabies surveillance, climate‑resilient and low‑carbon health systems, and the role of ultra‑processed foods in a One Health agenda.

From declaration to delivery

For all the choreography, what will ultimately matter is what countries are prepared to do once the delegations leave Lyon.

As of Sunday afternoon, there was no final summit communiqué or list of national pledges published. French officials and WHO staff have signaled that a political declaration — informally dubbed by some participants as a “Lyon One Health Declaration” — is expected. Observers will be watching for specific commitments: new national One Health coordination bodies, integrated human‑animal‑environment surveillance systems, financing for laboratory and workforce capacity, or measurable targets on antimicrobial stewardship.

The obstacles are substantial. WHO itself has identified weak data‑sharing across sectors, fragmented surveillance systems, limited One Health workforce capacity and a lack of sustainable funding as major barriers to implementation. In many countries, ministries of health, agriculture and environment operate in silos, with separate budgets and incentives.

The economics of prevention are another fault line. The World Bank has previously estimated that One Health‑oriented prevention could generate at least $37 billion in annual global benefits, with costs amounting to less than 10% of that figure. Yet investments in surveillance, veterinary services, environmental monitoring and sanitation have often lagged, even after COVID‑19.

In the case of antimicrobial resistance, experts warn that efforts to curb unnecessary antibiotic use in human medicine and livestock must be balanced with farmers’ livelihoods and access to treatment, particularly in low‑ and middle‑income countries where informal livestock sectors support millions of households.

Researchers from French and international institutes, including INRAE, CIRAD and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, have used the run‑up to the summit to argue that One Health strategies must be grounded in local realities, not only in global risk calculations. Groups working directly with smallholder farmers and communities, such as the PREZODE initiative and Agronomists and Veterinarians Without Borders, have emphasized that disease prevention measures that threaten incomes or food security are unlikely to be sustainable.

A test of trust

Behind the technical language of One Health and the carefully designed campaign graphics, the question confronting WHO in Lyon is whether its call to “stand with science” can resonate beyond conference halls and social media feeds.

The agency is asking governments to shore up scientific institutions and base policy on evidence “for people, animals and the planet.” It is asking scientists to be more visible and more willing to explain uncertainty. It is asking health workers to bring those messages into clinics and villages. And it is asking ordinary citizens, still living with the social and economic scars of the pandemic, to trust the same institutions that many critics have spent years undermining.

In the end, the success of the World Health Day campaign and the Lyon summit is likely to be measured less by the length of any declaration than by what changes — or does not change — in hospitals, farms and city streets.

If new, integrated surveillance systems catch outbreaks before they spread, if antibiotics are used more sparingly without leaving patients untreated, if air quality standards and climate‑resilient health plans move from paper to practice, the effect of Lyon may be visible in quieter statistics: fewer infections, fewer deaths, lower costs.

If not, the banners and speeches may linger mainly as a record of how clearly the risks were described — and how hard it proved to translate standing with science into the structures and resources needed to act on it.