Transdisciplinary Public Health

Research, Education, and Practice

Debra Haire-Joshu, Timothy D. McBride, Debra Haire-Joshu, Timothy D. McBride

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118415344
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Public Health, Administration & Care

"This book makes a great leap in the conceptualization of transdisciplinary approaches, as well as provides concrete examples in practice, teaching, policy, and research."

—From the Foreword by Edward F. Lawlor, dean and the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor, the Brown School; and founding director, Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis

The complexity of public health and social problems is becoming more challenging. Understanding and designing solutions for these problems requires perspectives from multiple disciplines and fields as well as cross-disciplinary research and practice teams. Transdisciplinary Public Health fills a void in the literature and offers a comprehensive text that introduces transdisciplinary methods as a means for providing an innovative tool set for problem-solving in public health research and practice.

With contributions from leading experts, Transdisciplinary Public Health offers an understanding of interactions among the biological, behavioral, social, and public health sciences; shared disciplinary frameworks in analyzing health problems; and the integration and evaluation of transdisciplinary solutions to alleviate complex public health issues. Use of this important resource will promote transdisciplinary research and practice, resulting in novel solutions that positively impact human health.

Part 1

Defining Transdisciplinary Research and Education

Chapter 1

Transdisciplinary Public Health: Definitions, Core Characteristics, and Strategies for Success

Daniel Stokols
Kara L. Hall
Amanda L. Vogel

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Learning Objectives

• Understand transdisciplinary approaches in public health.
• Define public health problems using a transdisciplinary approach.
• Describe why and when a transdisciplinary approach is needed.
• Explain how a team-based approach to public health works.
• Explain why working collaboratively with diverse communities and constituencies is important in public health.

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The publication of this book reflects the burgeoning interest and investment in cross-disciplinary approaches to scientific questions and societal problems in several research domains in recent decades.^1–5 As social problems are inherently complex and multifaceted, their resolution or amelioration often calls for cross-disciplinary research that integrates perspectives from multiple disciplines and fields. Moreover, the translation of science into new and effective programs and policies typically requires the creation of partnerships spanning diverse groups, including academic groups, governmental agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and community groups.^6–10 Reflecting these realities, the boundaries between disciplines and fields have become increasingly blurred as scholars and practitioners representing diverse perspectives form scientific and translational teams to work collaboratively at the nexus of their knowledge domains.^11–14 These trends have given rise to a new interdisciplinary field, the science of team science (SciTS), which aims to better understand the circumstances that facilitate or hinder effective team-based research and practice and to identify the unique outcomes of these approaches in the areas of productivity, innovation, and translation.^15,16

The SciTS field includes a special focus on cross-disciplinary, team-based approaches. These approaches aim to draw together the most appropriate conceptual frameworks, theories, and methodological approaches from a variety of disciplines in order to address complex scientific and societal problems most effectively. Disciplines are socially constructed in the sense that large numbers of scholars working in various domains have come to agree over time that particular substantive foci, levels of analysis, and conceptual and methodological tools are associated with particular disciplines (such as physics, biology, sociology, or economics) and professional fields (such as law, business, or medicine). Thus these disciplines emphasize different kinds of knowledge in their subject matter, including particular sets of life, physical, or social science “facts”; their analytical levels range from nano, molecular, and cellular to intrapersonal, organizational, and community perspectives; and each is uniquely associated with particular theoretical and methodological exemplars—for instance, Newtonian and Einsteinian conceptualizations of energy and matter or Freudian and radical behaviorist paradigms or functionalist versus conflict theories of organizations and societies.^17,18

In this chapter, the term field is differentiated from the term discipline as defined earlier. A field is a cross-disciplinary area of scientific inquiry or professional practice that focuses on a particular research topic or societal problem. Fields of inquiry and practice encompass multiple disciplinary perspectives that are deemed relevant for understanding a particular research question or societal problem. Examples of fields spanning multiple disciplinary perspectives include public health, urban planning, sustainability studies, and SciTS. The recent growth of cross-disciplinary, team-based research and practice stems from the recognition that whereas disciplines provide useful tools for framing research and practice, approaches derived from a single discipline may not provide the necessary tools to fully understand and address complex scientific and societal problems, particularly when it comes to identifying and understanding multiple interacting causal factors and developing innovative solutions. Thus a variety of new cross-disciplinary fields have arisen in recent decades to provide more integrative, broad-gauged analyses of complex scientific and societal problems.

Scholars have distinguished various forms of cross-disciplinary collaborative research and practice, with the three most commonly identified forms being multidisciplinary (MD), interdisciplinary (ID), and transdisciplinary (TD) collaborations. Some conceptualize MD, ID, and TD modes of research and problem solving as subtypes of cross-disciplinarity that are arrayed along a continuum ranging from lower to higher levels of integration and potential for innovation.^19–22 Accordingly, the MD approach is typically understood as the sequential or additive combination of ideas or methods drawn from two or more disciplines or fields to address a problem; the ID approach involves the integration of perspectives, concepts, theories, and methods from two or more disciplines or fields to address a problem; and the TD approach entails not only the integration of approaches but also the creation of fundamentally new conceptual frameworks, hypotheses, and research strategies that synthesize diverse approaches and ultimately extend beyond them to transcend preexisting disciplinary boundaries.^2,5,23,24 Another hallmark of a TD approach that distinguishes it from other cross-disciplinary approaches is the emphasis on translation of research findings into practical solutions to social problems, which Hadorn and Pohl² refer to as problems of the life world and Stokols⁸ characterizes as transdisciplinary action research.

These proposed distinctions, however, belie some of the complexities involved in differentiating among the MD, ID, and TD modes of inquiry and problem solving. First, each of these forms of cross-disciplinary research and practice can be pursued by individuals working on their own or collaborating with others on a team. Second, MD, ID, and TD approaches rarely occur in isolation from each other. More often, individual scholars or teams of scientists and practitioners transition among them and also engage in unidisciplinary (UD) modes of inquiry during different phases of a single project.^5,25 It may be a challenge to determine when, exactly, an initiative has transitioned from coordination to integration (from MD to ID) or from integration to synthesis, extension, and transcendence (from ID to TD). Third, among scholars of cross-disciplinary research, there is continuing discussion about whether TD is descriptive of a research process or whether it best describes the research outcomes that eventually emerge from projects that may include some blend of MD, ID, and TD processes. Reflecting the blurred boundaries between areas of specialization in cross-disciplinary collaboration, there is a great deal of overlap in the definitions of ID and TD put forward in various federal government funding announcements and guidance documents (see, for example, materials from the National Academy of Sciences,²⁶ the National Institutes of Health,²⁷ the National Science Foundation,²⁸ and the US Department of Health and Human Services²⁹).

Despite these definitional complexities, we believe there are practical and scientific benefits to conceptualizing transdisciplinary research and practice as distinct from ID research and practice. First, TD approaches emphasize the generation of novel, often paradigm-expanding or -creating, conceptual frameworks, hypotheses, research designs, and translations of scientific outcomes into solutions to social problems.^21,30 These products may have transformational effects in the realms of theory development, research, and community practice. Introducing students, scholars, and community practitioners to TD approaches inspires high aspirations and offers a frame of reference for encouraging scientists and professionals to achieve the most innovative intellectual and translational advances possible (see, for example, Glass and McAtee;³¹ Frumkin³²). In addition, framing TD research and practice as offering the greatest potential for innovation of all cross-disciplinary methods highlights this method’s increased likelihood of producing highly significant and effective scientific outcomes and practical applications.^33,34 For instance, by including the term transdisciplinary in the title of its request for applications to establish cancer research and training centers (in tobacco use research, energetics and cancer, health disparities, and cancer communications), the National Cancer Institute conveyed to applicant teams the importance of striving to achieve transformative innovations in the field of cancer prevention and control.^35–39

Second, the distinctive focus of TD approaches on translating scientific outcomes into practical applications leads to unique team compositions and outcomes. TD teams may include not only scientists from multiple disciplines and fields but also practitioners, policymakers, and community members who together offer a broad array of relevant knowledge and points of view useful for translating scientific findings into improved practices and policies. The goal of translation and the breadth of expertise brought to bear by a TD team maximize the potential for scientific and translational innovations and impact.

To reflect these unique characteristics of the TD approach, we propose the following definition of TD research and practice: an integrative process whereby scholars and practitioners from both academic disciplines and nonacademic fields work jointly to develop and use novel conceptual and methodological approaches that synthesize and extend discipline-specific perspectives, theories, methods, and translational strategies to yield innovative solutions to particular scientific and societal problems.

This definition highlights the emphasis on integration and innovation in TD initiatives. There are two main forms of TD integration: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal integrations involve the linkage of disciplines at similar levels of analysis, such as an integration of the genetic perspective of biology and the molecular perspective of che...