title: Interweaving Knowledge Resources to Address Complex Environmental Health Challenges.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Complex problems do not respect academic disciplinary boundaries. Environmental health research is complex and often moves beyond these boundaries, integrating diverse knowledge resources to solve such challenges. Here we describe an evolving paradigm for interweaving approaches that integrates widely diverse resources outside of traditional academic environments in full partnerships of mutual respect and understanding. We demonstrate that scientists, social scientists, and engineers can work with government agencies, industry, and communities to interweave their expertise into metaphorical knowledge fabrics to share understanding, resources, and enthusiasm.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Our goal is to acknowledge and validate how interweaving research approaches can contribute to research-driven, solution-oriented problem solving in environmental health, and to inspire more members of the environmental health community to consider this approach.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Research Program (SRP), as mandated by Congress, has evolved to become a program that reaches across a wide range of knowledge resources. SRP fosters interweaving multiple knowledge resources to develop innovative multidirectional partnerships for research and training. Here we describe examples of how motivation, ideas, knowledge, and expertise from different people, institutions, and agencies can integrate to tackle challenges that can be as complex as the resources they bring to bear on it.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  By providing structure for interweaving science with its stakeholders, we are better able to leverage resources, increase potential for innovation, and proactively ensure a more fully developed spectrum of beneficial outcomes of research investments.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Anderson BE, Naujokas MF, Suk WA. 2015. Interweaving knowledge resources to address complex environmental health challenges. Environ Health Perspect 123:1095-1099; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1409525.
authors.affiliation: Superfund Research Program, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA.
authors.forename: Beth Ellen
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: Marisa F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Naujokas
authors.forename: William A
authors.initials: WA
authors.lastname: Suk
mesh_terms: D003256:Community Participation / Q000379:methods*; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D004782:Environmental Health / Q000379:methods*; D004787:Environmental Pollution / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000517:prevention & control; D015386:Hazardous Substances; D006801:Humans; D054585:National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (U.S.); D044382:Population Groups; D014481:United States; D014495:Universities
chemical_list: D015386:Hazardous Substances