Important announcement: Dr María Jesús Lirola enters the top leadership of our EU BEACON One Health education via new technologies COST action

The action is now underway, setting scientific coordination, open curricula, and global engagement to help bring forward One Health teachings EU-wide and Worldwide

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Subject: Dr María Jesús Lirola appointed leader of the EU BEACON One Health education via new technologies COST action

We are pleased to officially confirm that Dr María Jesús Lirola has been appointed as the action-wide leader of our EU BEACON, recently awarded under the EU COST Science and Technology Coordination Programme. The action will operate from late 2025 to late 2029. Its official institutional hub is accessible at https://health.int.eu.org, where all verified communications and formal outputs will be published.

Please, note the other two official platforms:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@onehealthedtech
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/107609460/

All official communication is now fully centralised through our validated platforms. We kindly ask all members to share this announcement widely. Your support is essential to raise awareness, attract qualified contributors and ensure the success of this crucial initiative. We invite all members, collaborators and interested colleagues to follow and subscribe to our official communication channels. All previous informal groups on third-party messaging platforms are no longer officially endorsed. These spaces remain open only for informal exchanges. No formal announcements will be issued there, except through authenticated bots once deployed. As part of our broader mission, open democratic decision-support systems will be developed to promote inclusive and participatory processes across all levels of the school, including in our action affiliated schools. These tools will support conflict prevention, deliberation and ethical decision-making as core components of One Health education. Action funds will be allocated using an open peer reviewed transparent system as well.

EU BEACON consolidates a legally recognised, publicly funded, and transdisciplinary infrastructure dedicated to advancing One Health education as the primary lever for sustainable development, societal well-being, and planetary resilience. The appointment of Dr Lirola marks a structurally decisive stage in the action’s trajectory, from its initial foundation and planning stages to the launch of a fully coordinated, implementation-ready platform, guided by one of its most capable and ethically committed contributors. In light of the scope and urgency of our goals, the integrity of leadership and communication is paramount. All stakeholders are therefore reminded that the action’s governance structure is defined, formalised, and anchored in institutional legitimacy.

Dr Lirola’s academic and pedagogical trajectory aligns rigorously with the strategic direction of the action. She brings deep expertise in embedding health education across disciplinary curricula, in promoting biocultural diversity and equity, and in ensuring that cooperation, not competition, guides scientific and institutional advancement. Her contributions demonstrate the necessity of transitioning from unidirectional knowledge transfer to co-production, in which learners, professionals, and communities interact on equal epistemological and ethical terms. This principle will structure the implementation of EU BEACON across languages, regions, institutions, and learning contexts.

Her longstanding leadership in dialogical approaches and inclusive sport situates her work exactly at the intersection where our EU BEACON action is anchored: education, mental health, and participatory transformation. Dialogical methods, originally developed in clinical psychiatry, have since evolved into powerful frameworks for conflict resolution, institutional transparency, and peacebuilding. Their foundations in non-hierarchical listening, shared meaning-making, and mutual accountability make them indispensable for constructing trust-based, deliberative environments in education and public health. Within the One Health paradigm, where intersectoral cooperation, transdisciplinary knowledge, and intercultural sensitivity are essential, dialogical competence is not optional. It is both a method and a goal: to develop the collective capacity to resolve and prevent conflict without coercion, exclusion, or epistemic domination.

Dr Lirola’s recognised expertise in sport and exercise sciences strengthens the action’s capacity to address the embodied, ecological, and developmental dimensions of health. Inclusive sport, as implemented in her work through the Inclúyete programme and other laboratories, operates not only as a practice to support physical and mental well-being, but as a universal language of cooperation, regulation, and resilience. These structured, egalitarian contexts allow children and adults alike to reclaim agency, recover social belonging, and restore biological and psychological integrity. These pedagogical modalities, dialogue and movement, are not peripheral to One Health. They are its core mechanisms for fostering peaceful, bioculturally grounded, and cognitively rich communities.

Under Dr Lirola’s official leadership, these practices will be systematically embedded into the action’s open curricula, participatory pedagogies, and policy-relevant models. The objective is clear: to ensure that One Health education is not an abstract proposition but a lived, shareable, and practical reality, scientifically grounded, culturally inclusive, and ethically guided.

As we advance under consolidated EU COST funding through 2029, aiming to secure every recognition and partnership that excellence and urgency allow, our action is committed to becoming a fully recognised EU Flagship. This is not symbolic but a structural, scientific and ethical necessity. The scale and interconnection of current global crises including ecological collapse, zoonotic spread, forced displacement, educational breakdown and mental health emergencies demand a coordinated and transdisciplinary response. One Health education, driven by ethical technological innovation, is the decisive lever to restore system coherence, protect biocultural life and build the conditions for peace and sustainability. The groundwork laid by 2029 must support full-scale implementation across EU Member States and international partners, with permanent infrastructures, open curricula and sustained cooperation. Our action exists to ensure the best possible present for every child by building the educational basis of a good, shared future.

One Health is not a future goal or technical niche. It is the only viable framework to address planetary survival, intergenerational justice and the transformation of education. It integrates human, animal, environmental and technological dimensions and requires high-quality, sustained learning to become operative. Without this, One Health remains fragmented and unfulfilled. Our action is designed to resolve that gap and embed One Health in practice, policy and understanding.

In direct alignment with the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, our action focuses on SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). It also supports SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 5 (Gender Equality), recognising that malnutrition, exclusion, violence and ecological degradation are structurally linked. Without an educational realignment grounded in One Health, these goals will remain unattainable. Our action places educational transformation at the centre of a coherent and sustainable approach to global development.

Under Dr Lirola’s leadership, our action will serve as a pan-European and global platform for children, educators, professionals, and researchers to learn together. Through open curricular models, multilingual resources and collaborative teaching practices, we will support new content and open courseware from early childhood to postgraduate education. One Health principles must be integrated into all disciplines, not as an added theme but as a scientific and ethical foundation. As with gender equality and environmental responsibility, One Health must be embedded across systems.

Our action also fosters a deeper cultural shift. Education becomes a tool for peace, shared prosperity and restored dignity. Health is not simply the absence of illness but the full expression of human potential in diverse and cooperative communities.

To ensure continuity, memoranda of understanding with institutional partners are now being prepared. Sponsorship campaigns are being designed to engage multinational companies, public agencies, foundations and international bodies. These efforts will support both the action and its projects, curricula, platforms and innovations. Diversified funding will enable sustained delivery of outcomes and ensure responsible development and use of all outputs during and beyond the current funding cycle.

We now invite all members to prepare proposals for working groups, research lines, experimental curricula and digital tools. All must align with scientific integrity and One Health priorities. National, regional and disciplinary networks should be organised, with lists of individuals and institutions to invite during the recruitment phase beginning this summer.

Members are also encouraged to nominate experts for interviews to support dissemination and synthesis. Dialogues and moderated debates will expand the shared knowledge base. Focus groups, coordination meetings and brainstorming sessions will help define upcoming grant proposals and consortia. These steps will secure long-term scientific and educational impact beyond the official period of the action.

We thank all contributors to date. Under the leadership of Dr María Jesús Lirola, and with the continued support of our global coordination, we now move forward to implement the action with precision and vision. The work is demanding, but so is our shared capacity. Guided by rigorous knowledge, mutual care and deep ethical commitment, we move ahead together to educate not only for survival but for meaningful and just life.

Further updates and planning schedules will follow shortly.