Grand Challenges

Disease outbreaks and pandemics cause tremendous illness, mortality, and economic harm. A highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus has spread around the globe in the last four years and, like other influenzas, has the potential to cause a pandemic much worse than COVID-19. Emerging infectious diseases (EID) pose an imminent threat to global health and economicorder. Experts are calling for the urgent enactment of new policies to integrate agency action toprevent, prepare for, and identify emerging health threats and to provide funding to prevent andeffectively respond to a potential pandemic using a One Health approach. This approach shouldbe used to proactively coordinate and guide comprehensive disease outbreak prevention and preparedness, surveillance for early EID detection in people and animals, robust diseaseresponse and vaccination capacity, and ongoing education and communications strategies at thestate, national, and global levels.

Sustainable Food Systems have been identified as a Grand Challenge by the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), reflecting the societal need for improved food systems and the University’s unique ability to address that need through its research and education in agriculture, nutrition, and food sciences. To assess the University’s recent real-world impact on sustainable food systems, we analyzed policy citations of the University’s scholarly work using the Overton Policy Document database (accessed August 28-November 23, 2024). We identified longstanding policy impact in the fields of Land-use and emissions, Nutrition, Food Security, Crop Production, and Climate-smart Agriculture, and emerging areas of policy impact in the fields of Precision Agriculture, Ag Tech, Food Tech, Alternative Protein, and Bioactives. Policy impact of UC Davis exceeds that of comparable universities in the state of California in the field of food systems, broadly considered, for policy at the level of the State of California, as well as internationally, based on citations by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Across these scales, the most influential policy documents citing UC Davis research focused largely on the contribution and responses of food production systems to climate change and global health and nutrition. Understanding the policy impact of UC Davis in its pursuit of Sustainable Food Systems is important for benchmarking the University’s progress and providing guidance to maximize the real-world impact of the campus.