The Importance of Interdisciplinary Research Training and Community Dissemination.
Funding agencies and institutions are creating initiatives to encourage interdisciplinary research that can be more easily translated into community initiatives to enhance health. Therefore, the current research environment calls for interdisciplinary education and skills to create sustained partnerships with community institutions. However, formalized opportunities in both of these areas are limited for students embarking on research careers. The purpose of this paper is to underscore the historical and current importance of providing interdisciplinary training and community dissemination for research students. We also suggest an approach to begin to address the existing gap. Specifically, we suggest embedding a 10-week summer rotation into existing research curricula with the goals of: (1) providing students with a hands-on interdisciplinary research experience, (2) facilitating dialogue between research students and community settings to disseminate science to the public, and (3) sparking collaborations among researchers who seek to create a way to sustain summer program rotations with grant funding.
Department of Occupational Therapy, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Simone V
SV
Gill
Department of Occupational Therapy, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Misha
M
Vessali
Department of Occupational Therapy, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Jacob A
JA
Pratt
Department of Occupational Therapy, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Samantha
S
Watts
Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Janey S
JS
Pratt
Rehabilitation Medicine, NYU Langone Medical Center, New York, New York, USA.
Preeti
P
Raghavan
Anthropology, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Jeremy M
JM
DeSilva
D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000193:education*; D055812:Community-Based Participatory Research; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003479:Curriculum; D004517:Education, Professional; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D016730:Program Development; D011639:Public Opinion; D012108:Research Personnel / Q000193:education*
education; interdisciplinary; research