Transdisciplinary Research: Supplement in American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Sometimes being turned on by conceptual frameworks, transdisciplinary studies, paradigms and other esoteric sounding - blue skies stuff, you wonder if you are being just a tad grandiose. Your lip gets bitten especially when you are not being paid to think and write in this way and your doing so has major repercussions for the people in (and out) of your life. ...

Transdisciplinary research studies is far from new (have a scroll through Links I 2nd row - 'Theology / Inter - Transdisciplinary Studies'), but it is still very reassuring for me to see transdisciplinarity feature in a supplement of the latest American Journal of Preventive Medicine:

Thomas Kuhn wrote is his classic book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that paradigm shifts occur in science when the old ways of making sense of the world are no longer useful or appropriate. The need for a transdisciplinary approach to the study of health and disease is critically needed because the traditional silo approach to these issues clearly is not adequate to the challenges we face. As has been noted, we are not able to identify many disease risk factors; even when we do successfully identify risk factors, it is difficult for people to change their behavior to change their risk profile; and even if people do change their behavior, new people continually take their place because we have failed to identify many of the fundamental societal forces that cause the problem in first place. A new paradigm is needed.
Syme, S.L. (2008).

Other papers in the supplement include:

• Enhancing Transdisciplinary Research Through Collaborative Leadership
• Evaluation of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research: A Literature Review
• The Social Determinants of Cancer: A Challenge for Transdisciplinary Science
• Challenges for Multilevel Health Disparities Research in a Transdisciplinary Environment
• The Role of Transdisciplinary Collaboration in Translating and Disseminating Health Research: Lessons Learned and Exemplars of Success

If you come across other transdisc resources please let me know through the main site.

Syme, S.L. (2008). The Science of Team Science: Assessing the Value of Transdisciplinary Research, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 35, Issue 2, Supplement 1, August, Pages S94-S95. (two pages 18 refs).