Gotsche Caroline I, Weishaar Heide, Hanefeld Johanna
Faculty of Public Health and Policy, Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 15-17 Tavistock Place, London WC1H 9SH, United Kingdom.
Centre for International Health Protection, Robert Koch Institute, Nordufer 20, 13353 Berlin, Germany.
Health Policy. 2023 Apr;130:104715. doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2023.104715. Epub 2023 Feb 2.
Global Health (GH) in Germany increasingly becomes subject of political priority and scientists and policy makers. The aim of this study was to gain understanding of the current state, potential barriers and enablers of interdisciplinarity in GH in the academic sector in Germany.
Between October 2019 and February 2020, we conducted thirteen semi-structured interviews with ten academics and three policymakers engaged in GH in Germany. Purposive and maximum contrast sampling based on review of the literature was performed to ensure a heterogenous set of study participants.
We found that interdisciplinary exchange in GH research and education is limited in the German academic setting. Several context-specific barriers of interdisciplinary collaboration in the academic sector in Germany were detected, including terminological ambiguities and more biomedical actors being involved in global health compared to other disciplines. At the same time, enablers such as promotion of young academics and fostering topic-specific collaboration in GH research and education were identified to improve interdisciplinary working.
The importance of following an interdisciplinary approach is discussed and acknowledged across scientists working on GH in Germany. The current challenge is to identify which GH topics lend themselves to the collaboration of Germany-based scientists from various backgrounds and to establish common goals to advance interdisciplinarity research.
在德国，全球健康日益成为政治优先事项以及科学家和政策制定者关注的焦点。本研究旨在了解德国学术领域全球健康跨学科研究的现状、潜在障碍和推动因素。
2019年10月至2020年2月期间，我们对德国从事全球健康研究的10位学者和3位政策制定者进行了13次半结构化访谈。基于文献综述进行了目的抽样和最大差异抽样，以确保研究参与者的多样性。
我们发现，在德国学术环境中，全球健康研究与教育的跨学科交流有限。研究发现了德国学术领域跨学科合作的一些特定背景障碍，包括术语模糊以及与其他学科相比，参与全球健康研究的生物医学领域人员更多。与此同时，也确定了一些推动因素，如对青年学者的扶持以及在全球健康研究与教育中促进特定主题的合作，以改善跨学科工作。
德国从事全球健康研究的科学家们普遍讨论并认可采用跨学科方法的重要性。当前的挑战是确定哪些全球健康主题适合来自不同背景的德国科学家开展合作，并确立共同目标以推进跨学科研究。
