Public Health als anwendungsorientiertes Fach und Multidisziplin – „Forschendes Lernen“ als Antwort auf die Herausforderungen für Lehren und Lernen?

Abstract

Public health education aims at enabling students to deal with complex health-related challenges using appropriate methods based on sound theoretical understanding. Virtually all health-related problems in science and practice require the involvement of different disciplines. However, the necessary interdisciplinarity is only partly reflected in the curricula of public health courses. Also theories, methods, health topics, and their application are often taught side-by-side and not together. For students, it can become an insurmountable challenge to integrate the different disciplines ("horizontal integration") and theories, methods, health topics, and their application ("vertical integration"). This situation is specific for education in public health but is representative for other interdisciplinary fields as well. Several approaches are available to achieve the horizontal integration of different disciplines and vertical integration of theories, methods, health topics, and their application. A curriculum that is structured by topics, rather than disciplines might be more successful in integrating different disciplines. Vertical integration can be achieved by research-based learning. Research-based learning places a student-led research project at the centre of teaching. Students choose a topic and a research question, raise their own questions for theories and methods and will hopefully cross the seeming chasm between science and practice. Challenges of research-based learning are enhanced demands on students, teachers and curriculum design.

Implementing evidence ecosystems in the public health service: Development of a framework for designing tailored training programs

“… *2 We defined “ professions ” as roles obtained through specific training, academic education, or professional trajectory, and “ disciplines ” as overarching fields of work according to [ 85 ]. *3 Vertical integration describes the linkage of theories, methods, content, and application within the content of the program (bridging the gap between research and practice) [ 74 ]. …”

Implementing evidence ecosystems in the public health service: Development of a seven-step framework for designing tailored training programs

“…*1 Horizontal integration describes the integration of content for different professional disciplines into the curriculum so that participants can adopt a broad public health perspective (74).…”

Application of artificial intelligence to the public health education

“…Public health education aims to equip students with sound theoretical understanding to meet complex health-related challenges with appropriate methods. Actually, almost all theoretical and practical issues related to health involve multidisciplinary collaboration ( 74 , 75 ). However, only partial curriculums covered the necessity of interdisciplinarity in traditional public health education.…”

“…However, only partial curriculums covered the necessity of interdisciplinarity in traditional public health education. In addition, theories, methods, health topics, and their applications are often taught side by side, making it difficult for students to combine them ( 74 , 76 ). Fortunately, the application of AI in education brought new opportunities for health public education.…”