Transdisciplinary Research Teams Research Articles

‘Changing Climate, Changing Health, Changing Stories’ Profile: Using an EcoHealth Approach to Explore Impacts of Climate Change on Inuit Health

Global climate change and its impact on public health exemplify the challenge of managing complexity and uncertainty in health research. The Canadian North is currently experiencing dramatic shifts in climate, resulting in environmental changes which impact Inuit livelihoods, cultural practices, and health. For researchers investigating potential climate change impacts on Inuit health, it has become clear that comprehensive and meaningful research outcomes depend on taking a systemic and transdisciplinary approach that engages local citizens in project design, data collection, and analysis. While it is increasingly recognised that using approaches that embrace complexity is a necessity in public health, mobilizing such approaches from theory into practice can be challenging. In 2009, the Rigolet Inuit Community Government in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Canada partnered with a transdisciplinary team of researchers, health practitioners, and community storytelling facilitators to create the Changing Climate, Changing Health, Changing Stories project, aimed at developing a multi-media participatory, community-run methodological strategy to gather locally appropriate and meaningful data to explore climate-health relationships. The goal of this profile paper is to describe how an EcoHealth approach guided by principles of transdisciplinarity, community participation, and social equity was used to plan and implement this climate-health research project. An overview of the project, including project development, research methods, project outcomes to date, and challenges encountered, is presented. Though introduced in this one case study, the processes, methods, and lessons learned are broadly applicable to researchers and communities interested in implementing EcoHealth approaches in community-based research.

A Clinical Nurse's Perspective of Public and Community Health

I enjoyed reading the article by Wallerstein et al.1 on integrating social epidemiology and community-engaged interventions to improve health equity. As an associate professor of nursing who teaches community health nursing and epidemiology to graduate nursing students, I believe public health nurses must be included in efforts to ameliorate health equity strategies. Nurses compose the front line of their respective communities and possess the collaborative skills to make things happen. They are actively involved in coalitions and strive for community empowerment on a regular basis. As Wallerstein et al. identified, social epidemiology can be understood by drawing connections among social determinates of disease such as income, neighborhoods, psychosocial risk factors, and racism. Undergraduate nursing students often participate in poverty simulation exercises to stimulate their thinking regarding issues of poverty, especially poverty's demands and the lack of control it engenders. In my graduate course, students link to a variety of Youth Empowerment Strategies as well as to other resources. Thanks to the article, I plan to address community-based participatory research in my courses with the intent of directing graduate students toward community research projects in their local health departments. For this reason, I also appreciated the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Web site the authors provided (http://www.cdc.gov/prc), a resource that can help me identify replicable projects. I also appreciated the differentiation made between social epidemiologists and community-engaged interventionists as well as the extensive reference list, which will be valuable for my nursing courses. As noted on the CDC Web site, involving nurse researchers as part of the transdisciplinary research team will inform the issue of health inequities.

The Solar Transitions research on solar mini-grids in India: Learning from local cases of innovative socio-technical systems

The article presents new empirical material from a case study on longstanding, pioneering efforts on implementation and use of solar mini-grid systems in the Sunderban Islands in India. These local, socio-technical experiments have been investigated by a trans-disciplinary team of researchers and practitioners in order to gain a deep understanding of the diversity of social and technical factors influencing the ways in which the systems work at different levels. This socio-technical research highlights the dynamics between technology and society and how they are mutually influencing and shaping each other. These dynamics create gradual changes in the socio-technical system of technical devises, people, practices, knowledge and other elements, requiring adjustments also by the implementing actors. A range of technical and non-technical factors at various levels are found to be relevant for the implementation, operation, sustenance and further development of the solar power supply systems. The research points to important factors that should be taken into account and considered when planning similar activities. In addition to the analysis of the research findings, the article includes a brief review of literature on the implementation and use of solar photovoltaic technology in developing countries, with an emphasis on solar mini-grid systems.

Toward Food System Sustainability through School Food System Change: Think&EatGreen@School and the Making of a Community-University Research Alliance

This paper describes the theoretical and conceptual framework and the research and practice model of Think&EatGreen@School, a community-based action research project aiming to foster food citizenship in the City of Vancouver and to develop a model of sustainable institutional food systems in public schools. The authors argue that educational and policy interventions at the school and school board level can drive the goals of food system sustainability, food security, and food sovereignty. The complex relationship between food systems, climate change and environmental degradation require that international initiatives promoting sustainability be vigorously complemented by local multi-stakeholder efforts to preserve or restore the capacity to produce food in a durable manner. As a step towards making the City of Vancouver green, we are currently involved in attempts to transform the food system of the local schools by mobilizing the energy of a transdisciplinary research team of twelve university researchers, over 300 undergraduate and graduate students, and twenty community-based researchers and organizations working on food, public health, environmental and sustainability education.

‘The pitfalls of the “add-and-stir” approach to transdisciplinary public health research’

Health researchers increasingly include social scientific disciplines in their research programs, partly as a result of increasing recognition that complex public health issues benefit from a range of research approaches, and partly because funding bodies increasingly require transdisciplinarity. This commentary addresses the role of epistemology in transdisciplinary public health research (TPHR). We discuss two problems with current TPHR. The first problem is that social scientific input into TPHR is typically circumscribed to social, cultural, economic, and political analyses of a given public health issue, and further that these analyses only use social constructivist epistemologies. This narrow delineation under-utilizes a valuable, yet largely untapped resource; namely, various realist epistemologies regularly employed by social scientists, which are typically committed to anti-reductive and non-social constructivist understandings of scientific practices and knowledge. The second problem is the paucity of meta-analyses of the tacit epistemological cultures driving transdisciplinary research teams. The advantage of such meta-analyses is that they are able to make epistemologies explicit, which is the first step in actually integrating knowledge from different academic disciplines. Given that epistemological commitments guide research agendas – from what questions are asked and what methodologies are selected, to how findings are interpreted – understanding the role of epistemology stands to make an important contribution to improving TPHR.

A review of the urban development and transport impacts on public health with particular reference to Australia: trans-disciplinary research teams and some research gaps.

Urbanization and transport have a direct effect on public health. A transdisciplinary approach is proposed and illustrated to tackle the general problem of these environmental stressors and public health. Processes driving urban development and environmental stressors are identified. Urbanization, transport and public health literature is reviewed and environmental stressors are classified into their impacts and which group is affected, the geographical scale and potential inventions. Climate change and health impacts are identified as a research theme. From an Australian perspective, further areas for research are identified.

Gene‐Nutrition and Gene‐Physical Activity Interactions in the Etiology of Obesity

Gene‐Nutrition and Gene‐Physical Activity Interactions in the Etiology of Obesity

Commentaries on Viewpoint: Fatigue mechanisms determining exercise performance: Integrative physiology is systems physiology

Commentaries on Viewpoint: Fatigue mechanisms determining exercise performance: Integrative physiology is systems physiology

Transdisciplinary Research and Evaluation for Community Health Initiatives

Transdisciplinary research and evaluation projects provide valuable opportunities to collaborate on interventions to improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities. Given team members' diverse backgrounds and roles or responsibilities in such projects, members' perspectives are significant in strengthening a project's infrastructure and improving its organizational functioning. This article presents an evaluation mechanism that allows team members to express the successes and challenges incurred throughout their involvement in a multisite transdisciplinary research project. Furthermore, their feedback is used to promote future sustainability and growth. Guided by a framework known as organizational development, the evaluative process was conducted by a neutral entity, the Quality Assurance Team. A mixed-methods approach was utilized to garner feedback and clarify how the research project goals could be achieved more effectively and efficiently. The multiple benefits gained by those involved in this evaluation and implications for utilizing transdisciplinary research and evaluation teams for health initiatives are detailed.

A Second Generation of Active Living Research

Research on active living has grown significantly since its early days, now over a decade ago. What began as a plausible assertion—that the design of physical environments could encourage physical activity—is now a robust area of research inquiry. Today, active living research boasts an annual conference, several special journal issues dedicated to this topic (including this one), and a new generation of researchers drawn from very diverse disciplines who are committed to this field. Though it is still far from standard practice, the idea of engineering communities to naturally promote physical activity is no longer a radical notion. Active living research has also grown in maturity. Building on the first wave of studies, this second generation of research is more focused on specific populations and settings, more sophisticated in its theorizing, and more connected to planning and design practice. The 13 articles in this special issue represent some of the best of this second generation of active living research. The papers in this special issue of American Journal of Health Promotion were presented at the Third Annual Active Living Research Conference that was held in Coronado, California, February 17 through 18, 2006. The conference was designed to attract the best research to be submitted, and the best of those submissions were invited to prepare papers for consideration for this special issue. Thus, this set of papers from transdisciplinary research teams illustrates the breadth and quality of the current state of the science of this vibrant but still-new field of study.

When worlds collide: blending the divergent traditions of pharmacotherapy and-psychotherapy outcome research.

The multisite COMBINE Study brought together a team of alcoholism investigators who varied in whether their expertise was primarily in pharmacotherapy research or in studying psychotherapy. The process of designing a single trial that tested combinations of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy highlighted the differences in these two research traditions and necessitated a number of compromises that are the focus of this article. The COMBINE trial was designed to investigate the efficacy, separately and in combination, of two medications (i.e., naltrexone, acamprosate) with Medical Management and a state-of-the-art psychotherapy, known as the Combined Behavioral Intervention. Pharmacotherapy researchers favored studying outcome during the treatment period when medications were administered, viewing behavioral intervention as a means for minimizing variance during treatment and providing ethical care in placebo-controlled studies. In contrast, psychotherapy researchers focused on assessment of outcomes after treatment, regarding the behavioral intervention as a source of long-lasting change, necessitating careful training and monitoring of its implementation. The two traditions also differed on variables of interest in studying treatment process and secondary outcomes and methods of data collection and analysis. Some of the solutions reached by the COMBINE Study Research Group included studying both the short-term and long-term effects of treatment and selective inclusion of measures designed to evaluate processes specific to medications and to behavioral interventions. The successful compromises reached by the COMBINE Study Research Group may be helpful to other transdisciplinary research teams undertaking a combined evaluation of promising medications and behavioral interventions for alcoholism.

Evolution of Transdisciplinarity and Ecosystem Health at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

Antipodean pioneers of transdisciplinary (TD) thinking at the University of Newcastle, Glenn Albrecht and Nick Higginbotham have applied this perspective to contexts of human health globally and to the development of health social science as an emerging TD field. Nick Higginbotham has successfully championed the cause of TD thinking in international networks such as The International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN) and the International Forum for Social Sciences (IFSSEH). Glenn Albrecht has connected the Newcastle variety of TD thinking to its independently created doppelganger in the form of TD Ecosystem Health as pioneered by David Rapport in Canada. The convergence of TD thinking and Ecosystem Health at Newcastle has promoted a new curriculum in both undergraduate and postgraduate health and environmental sciences courses. Furthermore, TD research teams have been created and pursue investigations of both health and environmental problems. A successful national conference on transdisciplinary approaches to ecosystem health in Australia was held at Newcastle in April 2003. This article details the history of the evolution and synthesis of transdisciplinarity, ecosystem health, and ecohealth at the University of Newcastle, Australia, over a period from 1988 to the present.

Evaluating transdisciplinary science.

The past two decades have seen a growing interest and investment in transdisciplinary research teams and centers. The Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers (TTURCs) exemplify large-scale scientific collaborations undertaken for the explicit purpose of promoting novel conceptual and methodological integrations bridging two or more fields. Until recently, few efforts have been made to evaluate the collaborative processes, and the scientific and public policy outcomes, of such centers. This manuscript offers a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating transdisciplinary science and describes two ongoing evaluation studies covering the initial phase of the TTURC initiative. The methods and measures used by these studies are described, and early evaluative findings from the first 4 years of the initiative are presented. These data reveal progress toward intellectual integration within and between several of the TTURCs, and cumulative changes in the collaborative behaviors and values of participants over the course of the initiative. The data also suggest that different centers may follow alternative pathways toward transdisciplinary integration and highlight certain environmental, organizational, and institutional factors that influence each center's readiness for collaboration. Methodological challenges posed by the complexities of evaluating large-scale scientific collaborations (including those that specifically aspire toward transdisciplinary integrations spanning multiple fields) are discussed. Finally, new directions for future evaluative studies of transdisciplinary scientific collaboration, both within and beyond the field of tobacco science, are described.

Exploring the cultural context of tobacco use: a transdisciplinary framework.

Understanding culture is an essential key to reducing tobacco use. Conceptualizations of culture vary across scientific disciplines and theoretical orientations. Because of the complexity of the causes and effects of tobacco use, no single discipline has sufficient capacity to undertake a comprehensive approach to studying culture and tobacco. Transdisciplinary research offers a means of bridging disciplinary perspectives. This paper reviews epidemiological data on observed variation in smoking patterns across national groups, ethnicities and genders, and presents reasons for studying culture in tobacco control research. We discuss and contrast conceptualizations and specific definitions of culture and identify aspects of each conceptualization that are relevant to research on tobacco. We present a multilevel, multidimensional conceptual framework for transdisciplinary research teams to use to think together about the influence of culture on tobacco and of tobacco on culture. The framework challenges researchers to think about how the sociocultural context influences tobacco use at micro, meso, and macro levels. Finally, we offer suggestions for improving transdisciplinary research on culture and tobacco.

Combining participative and institutional approaches with multicriteria evaluation. An empirical study for water issues in Troina, Sicily

The policy problem addressed in this article is the perceived under-exploitation of the potential availability of water resources in the town of Troina (a municipality of eastern Sicily, Italy). In order to help the local town administration, which raised this issue, a trans-disciplinary research team was formed with the purpose of testing some explanatory hypotheses and to provide possible alternatives for action. The research design and process consisted of the following steps, (1) a multicriteria evaluation used as a learning tool to understand the main structure of the problem at hand and to explore its qualitative dimensions; (2) analysis of the structure of power interests and stakeholders (ranging from local to regional social actors) by means of an institutional analysis; (3) field research involving in-depth interviews with key actors, and a survey of local residents.This approach has proven very effective for finding out whether some real social compromise solutions exist.