Building Translation Science With Interdisciplinary Research: Why a Special Issue on the Proceedings of a Research Conference?

Abstract

In answer to the question posed for this editorial: a Special Issue on the Proceedings of a Research Conference: Building Translation Science with Interdisciplinary Research? The answer is simple. The presentations of the conference held April 15, 2009, were thoughtful and eloquent about two topics critical to nursing and to in today's world. They addressed complex issues and challenges facing health care providers and scientists. The ideas were captured in the articles collected for this special issue so that they might be shared with the nursing community as well as our interdisciplinary colleagues. It is exciting to read these articles and envision ways that nursing can provide leadership in improving the health of the nation. As we began our planning activities for the conference, we had multiple objectives. First, we aimed to highlight the interdisciplinary research and translational supported by the Michigan Center for Nursing Intervention (P30 NR0090000). Our other objectives were to establish an ongoing forum for scientific inquiry among the faculty and students at the School and to disseminate our research among our colleagues within the School and across the University in order to forge lines of inquiry. As the National Institutes of Health roadmap initiatives have unfolded, interdisciplinary and translational have been emphasized as necessary for developing knowledge to solve today's complex health problems. We believed that a focus on strengthening our interdisciplinary collaborations and methods for building translational would be of high interest to the faculty. Many faculty at the School are actively engaged in interdisciplinary research and as nurses, all are committed to developing knowledge for use in practice. We believed, too, that learning about interdisciplinary and translational would benefit our early career investigators and doctoral students as they prepared for future careers in science. Dr. Nancy Fugate Woods, Professor and Dean Emerita of the University of Washington School of Nursing, was identified as the keynote speaker because of her longstanding history of collaborative, interdisciplinary research. Dr. Woods served as an investigator for the Women's Health Initiative Study and as President of interdisciplinary organizations, including the North American Menopause Society and the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research. She has participated in setting research agendas as a member of the National Institutes of Health Women's Health Task Force and Office of Women's Health Research Advisory Council. We invited her to build on this experience and present a paper entitled Translational Research: Why Interdisciplinary Collaboration Is Essential. Dr. Woods has produced an article that acknowledges past contributions of nursing to translational and delineates challenges and opportunities. She describes how scientists of all disciplines are working to learn ways of doing science as well as transitioning to a new social contract for how one does science (Woods, this issue). In explaining transdisciplinarity, Dr. Woods gives the benefits of creating perspectives that can cross the traditional boundaries of disciplines in finding solutions. She lists the skill sets needed for working in this paradigm. Importantly, Dr. Woods gives us compelling reasons why nurses need to lead in interdisciplinary, translational research and examples of how we can lead. We invited two School of Nursing faculty and their interdisciplinary colleagues to present an overview of a research study and describe the necessity of having an interdisciplinary team. Dr. Bernadine Cimprich, Associate Professor of Nursing, and her colleague, Dr. Douglas Noll, Professor and Chairperson of Bioengineering and Co-Director, fMRI Laboratory, presented An Interdisciplinary Focus on Altered Brain Function in Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer. …