EcoHealth
Publisher: Springer-Verlag New York
ISSN: 1612-9202 (Paper) 1612-9210 (Online)
DOI: 10.1007/s10393-005-8387-y
Issue: Volume 2, Number 4
Date: December 2005
Pages: 258 - 272
Original Contributions
All Hands on Deck: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Emerging Infectious Disease
Margot W. Parkes1, 2 , Leslie Bienen3, Jaime Breilh4, Lee-Nah Hsu5, Marian McDonald6, Jonathan A. Patz7, Joshua P. Rosenthal8, Mazrura Sahani9, Adrian Sleigh10, David Waltner-Toews11 and Annalee Yassi12
(1) Global Health Research Program, University of British Columbia, Library Processing Centre, 2206 East Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia , V6T 1Z3, Canada
(2) Asia-Pacific Center for Infectious Disease Ecology, Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii, 1960 East-West Road, Honolulu, HI , 96822-2319
(3) Leslie Bienen, 811 Highland Park Drive, Missoula, MT
(4) Centro de Estudios y Asesoria en Salud (Health Research and Advisory Center), Asturias, Quito, N2402, Ecuador
(5) Health Systems Program, International Health Department, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
(6) Office of Minority and Women¡¯s Health, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA
(7) Global Environmental Health Program, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE), University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
(8) Division of International Training and Research, Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD
(9) Environmental Health Research Center, Institute for Medical Research, Jalan Pahang, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
(10) National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
(11) Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
(12) Institute of Health Promotion Research, Department of Health Care and Epidemiology, and Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Published online: 10 November 2005
Abstract The increasing burden of emerging infectious diseases worldwide confronts us with numerous challenges, including the imperative to design research and responses that are commensurate to understanding the complex social and ecological contexts in which infectious diseases occur. A diverse group of scientists met in Hawaii in March 2005 to discuss the linked social and ecological contexts in which infectious diseases emerge. A subset of the meeting was a group that focused on ¡°transdisciplinary approaches¡± to integrating knowledge across and beyond academic disciplines in order to improve prevention and control of emerging infections. This article is based on the discussions of that group. Here, we outline the epidemiological legacy that has dominated infectious disease research and control up until now, and introduce the role of new, transdisciplinary and systems-based approaches to emerging infectious diseases. We describe four cases of transboundary health issues and use them to discuss the potential benefits, as well as the inherent difficulties, in understanding the social–ecological contexts in which infectious diseases occur and of using transdisciplinary approaches to deal with them.
Keywords transdisciplinary - social–ecological systems - emerging infectious diseases - HIV - SARS - Nipah virus
The views expressed here by Marian McDonald and Josh Rosenthal are those of the authors and do not represent official views or policies of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the National Institutes of Health.
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Margot W. Parkes
Email: mparkes@ecohealth.net
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