Shaping Education and Training to Advance Transdisciplinary Health Research

Abstract

Despite at least two decades of effort, the United States has made little progress in addressing the health disparities experienced by its most vulnerable residents. For many diseases, the gaps in health between groups continue to grow. In this paper, we first build a case for the importance of a transdisciplinary approach to eliminating health disparities, based on the premise that executing successful disparities research depends on the ability to visualize the multiple influences on health and health disparities and understand the complex ways in which they interact with one another to produce worse outcomes for some groups than others. We argue that our failure to prepare investigators to conduct transdisciplinary research has greatly impeded our progress toward eliminating the nation’s disparities. Finally, we articulate the challenges of implementing transdisciplinary education and training and recommend elements of a successful transdisciplinary educational program in health.