The Role of Transdisciplinary Collaboration in Translating and Disseminating Health Research Lessons Learned and Exemplars of Success Karen M. Emmons, PhD, Kasisomayajula Viswanath, PhD, Graham A. Colditz, MD, DrPH Abstract: In the past few decades, significant advances have been made related to understanding, preventing, and treating chronic disease. Given these many advances across multiple disciplines, it is unclear why the potential for yielding substantial reduction in disease has not been achieved overall and across various subgroups. Socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in a wide range of disease outcomes persist, and a number of studies highlight the importance of further improving behavioral risk-factor prevalence on a population level. The goal of this paper is to explore the role of transdisciplinary collaboration in the translation of research related to these vexing public health problems, and, in particular, to explore factors that appear to facilitate effective and sustainable translation. Transdis- ciplinary collaboration also has great potential to speed the rate of adoption of evidence- based practices. Examples of transdisciplinary collaborations in academic and community settings are provided, along with factors that may influence the long-term outcomes of transdisciplinary efforts. (Am J Prev Med 2008;35(2S):S204 –S210) © 2008 American Journal of Preventive Medicine Introduction T he past three decades have witnessed substantial progress in reducing the prevalence of prevent- able disease among adults in the U.S., with contributions from many disciplines. 1 Epidemiologic methods have advanced the understanding of the types, nature, and timing of exposures that increase disease risk. 2 Social and behavioral sciences have provided a perspective on disease causation that goes beyond bio- medical approaches, drawing on social– epidemiologic approaches to understand the population distribution of diseases and conditions and using population-based ap- proaches that extend intervention research beyond high- risk populations. Both basic and biomedical science have made significant advances in targeted treatment strate- gies. Still, the question remains: Isn’t there potential for yielding even greater reductions in disease than have been achieved to date? For example, many diseases con- tinue to have disproportionately high prevalence among racial and ethnic minority and lower-socioeconomic groups. In addition, the need to reduce behavioral risk- factor prevalence on a population basis has been recog- From the Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health (Emmons, Viswanath), Boston, Massachusetts; and the Alvin J Siteman Cancer Center, Washington University School of Medicine (Colditz), St. Louis, Missouri Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Karen M. Em- mons, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 44 Binney Street, LW703, Boston MA 02115. E-mail: karen_m_emmons@dfci.harvard.edu. S204 Am J Prev Med 2008;35(2S) nized. 1,3 It has been estimated that community-based cholesterol interventions are cost effective if blood cho- lesterol levels are reduced by as little as 2%. 4 The full implementation of currently available cancer prevention and early-detection strategies at the population level could reduce U.S. cancer mortality by approximately 60%. 5,6 Processes and mechanisms at one level (e.g., at the molecular level) may influence outcomes at another level (e.g., among population subgroups), thus calling for a more-synergistic approach to understanding and solving diseases and conditions. A transdisciplinary approach to research, as proposed by Rosenfield, 7 may be necessary if health promotion and chronic disease prevention efforts are to live up to their potential. A key goal of this paper is to explore the role of transdisci- plinary collaboration in the translation of research related to public health, and, in particular, to explore factors that appear to facilitate effective and sustainable translation. Although some examples provided may influence bench-to-bedside translation, the primary fo- cus in this paper is on addressing socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities and on closing the evidence- to-practice gap. Public Health and Transdisciplinary Science Public health is the ideal environment in which to develop transdisciplinary science. The social– ecologic model, 8 a framework that is widely used for exploring 0749-3797/08/$–see front matter © 2008 American Journal of Preventive Medicine • Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2008.05.009