Interdisciplinary research is widely considered a hothouse for innovation, and the only plausible approach to complex problems such as climate change. One barrier to interdisciplinary research is the ...widespread perception that interdisciplinary projects are less likely to be funded than those with a narrower focus. However, this commonly held belief has been difficult to evaluate objectively, partly because of lack of a comparable, quantitative measure of degree of interdisciplinarity that can be applied to funding application data. Here we compare the degree to which research proposals span disparate fields by using a biodiversity metric that captures the relative representation of different fields (balance) and their degree of difference (disparity). The Australian Research Council's Discovery Programme provides an ideal test case, because a single annual nationwide competitive grants scheme covers fundamental research in all disciplines, including arts, humanities and sciences. Using data on all 18,476 proposals submitted to the scheme over 5 consecutive years, including successful and unsuccessful applications, we show that the greater the degree of interdisciplinarity, the lower the probability of being funded. The negative impact of interdisciplinarity is significant even when number of collaborators, primary research field and type of institution are taken into account. This is the first broad-scale quantitative assessment of success rates of interdisciplinary research proposals. The interdisciplinary distance metric allows efficient evaluation of trends in research funding, and could be used to identify proposals that require assessment strategies appropriate to interdisciplinary research.
Cancer patients and survivors with food insecurity, housing instability, and transportation-related barriers face challenges in access and utilization of quality cancer care thereby adversely ...impacting their health outcomes. This portfolio analysis synthesized and described National Cancer Institute (NCI)-supported social risk research focused on assessing food insecurity, housing instability, and transportation-related barriers among individuals diagnosed with cancer.
We conducted a query using the National Institutes of Health iSearch tool to identify NCI-awarded extramural research and training grants (2010-2022). Grant abstracts, specific aims, and research strategies were coded for research characteristics, study population, and outcomes.
Of the 30 grants included in this analysis, most assessed transportation-related barriers as patient-level social needs. Grants focused on community-level social risks, food insecurity, and housing instability were largely absent. Most grants included activities that identified the presence of social risks and/or needs (n = 24), connected patients to social care resources (n = 10), and engaged community members or organizations to inform the research study (n = 9). Of the grants, 18 focused on a single type of cancer, primarily breast cancer, and more than half focused on the treatment and survivorship phases.
In the last decade, there has been limited NCI-funded social risk research grants focused on food insecurity and housing instability. Findings highlight opportunities for future cancer care delivery research, including community and health system-level approaches that integrate social and clinical care to address social risks and social needs. Such efforts can help improve outcomes of populations that experience cancer health and health-care disparities.
In 2015, the National Institutes on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) engaged in a two-year science visioning process for health disparities and convened a series of workshops aimed at ...identifying promising research directions. A central theme that resonated throughout these workshops was the importance of social determinants of health and their relationship to health disparities. Broadly defined, social determinants of health represent economic and political structures, social and physical environments, and access to health services.1 Although observational research has documented the influence of social determinants on actual health, unanswered questions surrounding the mechanisms that explain why those who are socially disadvantaged suffer disproportionality from disease- and health-related burden remain. This editorial summarizes key research directions that emerged from NIMHD's science visioning and are aimed at developing a more robust understanding of how social determinants ofhealth contribute to health disparities.
This research note reports empirical observations on public communication of research institutes within universities, using data from an international quantitative study in eight countries (N = ...2030). The note aims to contribute to discussions on the role of science communication at research universities. We observe growing science communication at the institute level, which indicates, at a first glance, a trend towards decentralised communication of science. We argue that these might be places where science communication and public engagement can thrive. Rather than claiming to be conclusive, our goal here is to stimulate discussion on the ongoing changes in the organisational science communication landscape, and the consequences it may have for practice.
The Cures Act that President Obama has signed into law will provide the National Institutes of Health with critical tools and resources to advance biomedical research across the spectrum from basic, ...curiosity-driven studies to advanced trials of promising therapies.
The Cures Act, formally known as H.R. 34 or the 21st Century Cures Act,
1
passed overwhelmingly in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate in the waning days of the 114th Congress and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 13, 2016. Weighing in at nearly 1000 pages, this bipartisan bill is the product of years of hard work by Republican and Democratic lawmakers, in collaboration with a broad array of diverse stakeholders. As with any landmark piece of legislation, the complex negotiations leading up to its passage were challenging and intense. But the final provisions are . . .
Despite continuing criticism of the Chinese authoritarian political system, the range of
participants in the decision-making process has widened, with different social actors
now playing an ...increasingly important role in the Chinese policymaking process.
Accordingly, the role of think tanks in the policymaking process has generated great
interest within and outside China. This book explores the behaviour and influence of
China's think tanks, and explains the reasons and social consequences of the rise of
think tanks in China.
The book raises several questions on the topic: How did think tanks emerge in China?
What are the essential factors that determine think tanks in terms of building their
governmental and personal networks? How do think tanks work and build their influence in
the Chinese policy process? What happens to Chinese society when think tanks become
important policy participants in the policy process? The book goes on to discuss new
perspectives on policy processes and elite politics in China, and empirically, with
comparative case study and data from nationwide questionnaire surveys, provides a
comprehensive picture of think tanks in the current political system of the country.
Diagnosis at the edges of our knowledge calls upon clinicians to be data driven, cross-disciplinary, and collaborative in unprecedented ways. Exact disease recognition, an element of the concept of ...precision in medicine, requires new infrastructure that spans geography, institutional boundaries, and the divide between clinical care and research. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund supports the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) as an exemplar of this model of precise diagnosis. Its goals are to forge a strategy to accelerate the diagnosis of rare or previously unrecognized diseases, to improve recommendations for clinical management, and to advance research, especially into disease mechanisms. The network will achieve these objectives by evaluating patients with undiagnosed diseases, fostering a breadth of expert collaborations, determining best practices for translating the strategy into medical centers nationwide, and sharing findings, data, specimens, and approaches with the scientific and medical communities. Building the UDN has already brought insights to human and medical geneticists. The initial focus has been on data sharing, establishing common protocols for institutional review boards and data sharing, creating protocols for referring and evaluating patients, and providing DNA sequencing, metabolomic analysis, and functional studies in model organisms. By extending this precision diagnostic model nationally, we strive to meld clinical and research objectives, improve patient outcomes, and contribute to medical science.
From Lifespan to Healthspan Olshansky, S. Jay
JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association,
10/2018, Letnik:
320, Številka:
13
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The article discusses the rise observed in human life expectancy since the turn of the 19th century. The need is to understand that the longer people live, the more important aging biology becomes as ...a primary risk factor in determining both length and quality of life. Efforts should be concentrated on achieving the goals of extending and improving the healthspan.
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