The aim of the ‘Integrating Health Research: Mechanisms to Populations’ research strand is to promote and facilitate interdisciplinary research between fundamental bio-scientists and population health scientists. The strand will bring together the ground-breaking research into disease mechanisms being carried out in fundamental biosciences with the state-of-the-art methodologies and applied techniques in the population health sciences. In doing so it will help to fully realise the potential of the research expertise at the University, in two areas of existing depth and strength, and address challenges that can only be addressed by interdisciplinary teams of researchers. The ultimate objective is to enhance the understanding of disease processes and accelerate the arrival of therapies into the clinic beyond that achieved by each discipline alone.

Fundamental bioscience is the study of the molecular, cellular and systems processes that form the basis of life. Research in fundamental bioscience at the University of Bristol is diverse and centres around understanding the processes that cause and exacerbate disease, leading to eventual generation of therapies and disease prevention strategies.

Population health science is the study of the biological, social and environmental factors that influence the health and wellbeing of populations. The world-leading research in population health science at the University of Bristol includes work on the causes of disease, the identification of intervention strategies to improve health or prevent disease and ways to improve health care practice and policy.

Interdisciplinary collaboration can be challenging and there is far greater capacity across this space than is currently being realised. Researchers often find it easy to identify the aspects of their research that would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach. However, despite potential, there is a lack of capacity and resource to carry them to completion, because the work falls mostly outside their currently funded research. In addition, many researchers may never become aware of like-minded colleagues working with very different approaches to tackle the same health problem. Researchers in each field must also understand the capability and capacity of the other, the advantages but also the limitations of each other’s methods, models and techniques. In order to ensure that interdisciplinary grants submitted have the best chance of funding, there needs to be a mechanism for researchers to access support and expertise in new discipline to generate preliminary data and write the required sections of the grant.

Numerous precedents in health research demonstrate the most significant advances happen through the collaborative effort of different disciplines. We believe that there is untapped potential to link ‘discovery’ population health science to mechanistic interrogation in fundamental bioscience and conversely, huge scope to demonstrate the population level impact of bioscience discoveries.  

The strand will provide a formal structure (‘a home’) for promoting and facilitating interdisciplinary research between fundamental bioscience and population health science through providing a space to foster collaborations. The Strand will support researchers in undertaking interdisciplinary research across faculties, by pump priming projects, providing training and supporting emerging collaborations through access to a dedicated individual with the expertise and knowledge base of both disciplines necessary to expediate project ideas and establish productive collaboration. In doing so, our aim is to support interdisciplinary grant applications and publications, connecting people across disciplines and catalysing new research. By identifying and promoting exemplars in interdisciplinary working, this Strand will promote visibility and capacity in interdisciplinary science.