New McMaster initiative fosters cross Faculty research teams

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Denburg.jpg” caption=”Susan Denburg, associate dean, academic, of the Faculty of Health Sciences, is leading the current phase of the Collaborations for Health initiative. “]It was a team of researchers from McMaster's Institute of Environment and Health, the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Faculty of Social Sciences who answered the call when the Ontario government commissioned Canada's first study on West Nile virus.

The University now has several large grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the U.S. National Institutes for Health to do more work on the infectious disease.

That joint effort is one example of the types of interdisciplinary collaborations being sought by the University's new Collaborations for Health initiative, whose goal is to support the McMaster community in strategically linking excellence in health-related research and education to external health needs.

The initiative has been developed from the University's Refining Directions plan, and seeks to take advantage of McMaster faculty's unique experience in tackling complex problems in health, using the combined insights of many disciplines.

The Collaborations for Health initiative is being led by Susan Denburg, associate dean, academic, of the Faculty of Health Sciences.

“Our first step will be to ask McMaster faculty for their ideas for strategic collaborations in health-related research and education that build on existing areas of excellence and can make a difference,” she said. “We know we already have a lot of strengths, including a remarkable capacity to work in an interdisciplinary manner. What we're interested in is helping our faculty to mobilize these strengths and make them obvious to external stakeholders.”

An advisory group has been formed to develop a framework for the initiative. It includes Paul Bates of the Faculty of Business; Susan Elliott, Jerry Hurley and Susan Watt of the Faculty of Social Sciences; and Mita Giacomini, Del Harnish, John Lavis, Anthony Levinson and Suzanne Ross of the Faculty of Health Sciences. Broad consultation will be sought, both internally and externally, throughout the eight-month process, beginning with a call for proposals that will come out at the end of January.

Denburg will be encouraging faculty across the university to think creatively about how to further strengthen their work and reach out to form new interdisciplinary collaborations that can tackle real and emerging health problems in a unique and creative way.

Submissions will be reviewed by a broad-based group of experts. Faculty involved in submissions that reflect potential strategic areas of excellence for McMaster's Collaborations for Health will be invited to discuss the direction of the initiative and guide the University's investments for the future.

“While specific areas may be highlighted at the outset, the longer term goal is to build on initial success to create an infrastructure that will foster and sustain a vibrant interdisciplinary culture of scholarship in health,” Denburg explained.

“This stage of the initiative is critical,” says Ken Norrie, McMaster provost. “The ideas for action offered by the community will be the bedrock for the university's vision for its Collaborations for Health. I encourage all of you to consider your work in the context of this important initiative.”

This is the second phase of the initiative. In the first phase, a task force led by Jerry Hurley focused on identifying the range of health-related activity on campus, beyond the strengths already recognized in biomedical, bioengineering, and clinical trials research. It sought to identify the necessary conditions to foster health-related scholarship undertaken from the perspectives of the humanities, social and behavioural sciences and business. The recommendations from that report will be considered in the initiative's second phase.