A Way Out of Our Silos

For some in scientific enterprise, specialization breeds isolation. By virtue of comprehensive training in rich, complicated fields of knowledge, academics often struggle to break out of their disciplinary silos.

In their Grand Rounds lecture tomorrow, Raygine DiAquoi and Gina Wingood will offer a possible escape route: transdisciplinary research, also known as team science. Combining perspectives from different fields and sectors increases the power and possibility of research to answer some of the most pressing questions in public health, they argue.

To push the research envelope on increasingly interwoven population health problems, researchers may have to go outside of their comfort zones—even outside of public health, says Wingood, a professor of Sociomedical Sciences and director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion. “We have to talk to engineers, law faculty, sociologists, and education faculty,” she says. Because too often even huge topics like the social determinants of health are understood from a limited perspective.

DiAquoi, assistant professor of Sociomedical Sciences and director of the Office of Diversity, Culture, and Inclusion, says there has been plenty of research on the social forces shaping health—even in different disciplines—but so far there isn’t a common language for collaboration. “We’re asking these questions but in different ways,” she says. “That’s good for our research agenda, but we’re not really solving these problems.”

Another obstacle to team science is an incentive structure for research that rewards individuals over groups. And because academic training doesn’t give people the tools to work outside of their specialties, many are reluctant to cede ground. “It’s like a family gathering,” DiAquoi says, “even if they don’t say it, everyone thinks their approach is probably the best one.”

Of course, not everyone works in a silo. Earlier this year, the Urban Health Initiative at Mailman partnered with the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning and Preservation and the Columbia Population Research Center to challenge students to rethink the design of a healthy city. Similarly in 2014, Mailman students also took part in the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science-hosted Ebola Design Challenge to develop new ways to fight the West African outbreak. Here on 168th Street, professors Peter Muennig in Health Policy and Management and Robert Todd Ogden in Biostatistics are working with Wingood, Vice Dean of Education Julie Kornfeld, and Chief Communications Officer Peter Taback on a project to train students across disciplines to use data visualization as one way of reaching influential, non-scientific audiences, including media, funders, and policy makers. 

“The challenges we face are so complex, both socially and scientifically,” says Wingood. ”They’re multi-level and multifactorial, so we need different viewpoints to confront them.”

Team science is also more true to lived experience, adds DiAquoi. “People aren’t living single-issue lives. They’re not just living as people with HIV or mothers of black sons, and our research needs to start to reflect that.”