James Aimee S, Gehlert Sarah, Bowen Deborah J, Colditz Graham A
Division of Public Health Sciences, Department of Surgery, Washington University in Saint Louis, 660 So. Euclid Ave, Box 8100, St Louis, MO, 63110, USA.
The Brown School, Washington University in Saint Louis, Campus Box 1196, One Brookings Drive, St Louis, MO, 63130, USA.
J Cancer Educ. 2015 Dec;30(4):664-9. doi: 10.1007/s13187-014-0771-2.
Traditionally, postdoctoral training programs largely have focused efforts within a single discipline or closely related fields. Yet, addressing the complex questions around cancer prevention and control increasingly requires the ability to work and communicate across disciplines in order to gain a perspective that encompasses the multilevel and multifaceted issues involved with this public health issue. To address this complexity, a transdisciplinary training program was implemented to cultivate the professional and scientific development of the postdoctoral fellows in Washington University in St Louis School of Medicine's Division of Public Health Sciences and NCI-funded centers (Community Networks Program Center and Transdisciplinary Research in Energetics in Cancer Center). Fellows are matched with primary mentors and assemble a multidisciplinary mentoring team. Structured programs support the transition of fellows from disciplinary trainees to independent transdisciplinary scholars and provide exposure to multiple disciplines. This article describes the training program, challenges encountered in implementation, solutions to those problems, and the metrics employed to evaluate the program's success. The goal of the program is to train emerging investigators in the conceptual bases, language, and practices that underlie a transdisciplinary perspective on cancer prevention and control research, to create an infrastructure for continued cross-discipline dialogue and collaboration, and to develop disseminable strategies for such training.
传统上，博士后培训项目主要集中在单一学科或紧密相关的领域。然而，要解决围绕癌症预防与控制的复杂问题，越来越需要具备跨学科工作和交流的能力，以便获得一个涵盖该公共卫生问题所涉及的多层次和多方面问题的视角。为应对这种复杂性，实施了一个跨学科培训项目，以促进圣路易斯华盛顿大学医学院公共卫生科学部以及由美国国立癌症研究所资助的中心（社区网络项目中心和癌症能量学跨学科研究中心）博士后研究员的专业和科学发展。研究员与主要导师配对，并组建一个多学科指导团队。结构化项目支持研究员从学科受训人员向独立的跨学科学者转变，并让他们接触多个学科。本文描述了该培训项目、实施过程中遇到的挑战、针对这些问题的解决方案以及用于评估项目成功与否的指标。该项目的目标是培养新一代研究人员，使其掌握癌症预防与控制研究跨学科视角的概念基础、语言和实践方法，创建一个持续开展跨学科对话与合作的基础设施，并制定可传播的此类培训策略。
