Interdisciplinary research in public health: the ‘why’ and the ‘how’

Abstract

Public health constitutes a field of choice for developing interdisciplinary research. Targeting population health improvement necessarily entails embedding research and intervention within a variety of complementary disciplinary approaches. Medicine (and its scientific and professional domains), psychology, epidemiology, economics, social and political sciences, health services research, humanities, geography and legal science all involve research perspectives conducive to the observation, analysis, understanding and interpretation of health facts. When implementing and directing efficient and positive health actions for population, communities and people, the fact of working across disciplines—whether health be their main research focus and health improvement their aim—provides rich, innovative and relevant data for public health intervention. A number of definitions of interdisciplinarity are available in the literature.1 From these definitions, we retain two key characteristics: the encounter of two or more scientific disciplines and the interactive nature of the research process. The need for interdisciplinary research and action today is supported by two main arguments. First, the prominence of population health intervention research2 calls for evidence-based data on the effectiveness and efficiency of interventions that are useful to decision makers and meet the needs and expectations of populations. It implies adopting a multiperspective approach to health problems, their multidimensional factors and possible levers of intervention, as well as embracing the complex dimension of health problems1; only joint work between disciplines can help …

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