To Meet Challenges in Public Health, a Transdisciplinary Approach Is Required
Meeting today’s public health needs requires actions that cut across multiple areas of concern, from poverty and income inequality to infectious and chronic diseases. C. Eduardo Siqueira, MD, ScD, MPH, says this transversal approach draws from the very foundations of public health, which emphasize transdisciplinary care.
Siqueira is a public health researcher and educator who is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts School for the Environment. He is a coauthor of the 7th edition of Schneider’s Introduction to Public Health (Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2025), where his contributions include chapters on the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, and revisions to chapters on infectious diseases, the environment and regulations that impact health.
Siqueira recently shared additional insights on climate change in an article on the Jones & Bartlett Learning blog. Find it here.
The Important Role of Interconnectedness in Public Health
In the preface to the new edition of Schneider’s Introduction to Public Health, Siqueira and his two coauthors, Jessica Kruger, PhD, MCHES, and Andy Morales, PhD, MPH, CHES, describe their decision to delve deeper into emergent challenges in public health and to emphasize the interconnectedness of systemic and structural factors.
The 7th edition of this highly regarded textbook incorporates a focus on how stressing systemic and structural issues affect the health of the U.S. population. “We added frameworks, including the social determinants of health and life course perspective, to encourage the reader to think ‘upstream’ and to be critical of past and current approaches to solving public health problems,” the authors wrote.
The book also introduces students to the transdisciplinary approach known as One Health, a collaborative worldwide effort to achieve optimal health by recognizing the interconnection among people, animals, plants, and their shared environment.
“One Health includes the health of humans, animals, vegetation, rivers, and oceans,” Siqueira said. “This holistic view underscores the importance of considering the health of the entire planet in public health discussions.”
The concept of One Health has evolved over the past 15 years, Siqueira said, and it is built on the premise that public health has become a planetary issue.
“We have to look at humans as part of the huge ecosystem that is our planet,” Siqueira said. “It’s the only one we have. And we have to take care of our planet so that then we can take care of our health.”
By fostering collaboration across various disciplines — such as medicine, veterinary science, environmental science, and public health — One Health seeks to achieve optimal health outcomes. This holistic approach is crucial in addressing complex health issues like zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and environmental health threats.
For students in public health programs, understanding One Health is vital because it broadens their perspective on health issues and equips them with the knowledge to tackle multifaceted health challenges, Siqueira said. By adopting a One Health perspective, future public health professionals can develop more effective strategies for disease prevention, health promotion, and policy.
Using a Life Course Approach to Teaching Public Health
Working hand in hand with One Health is another key content focus in the book, the life course model. This model provides a comprehensive framework for public health students and professionals to understand how factors throughout a person’s life influence their health outcomes.
“We consider the life course approach very important, because health is in all policies,” Siqueira said. “In all issues facing our society, be it housing, transportation, employment, leisure, or education — we should look at health.”
Life Course Theory emphasizes that health is not determined solely by genetic factors or personal behaviors. It is also shaped by the social, economic, and environmental contexts experienced from conception to old age. Key concepts within the life course model include critical periods during which certain exposures can impact future health and the cumulative effects of advantages or disadvantages over time can lead to significant health disparities.
This model also underscores the need for policies and programs that support people at various stages of life. By adopting a life course perspective, public health professionals can develop more effective strategies to promote health equity and improve population health outcomes over the long term.
“The ideas that we tried to develop throughout the book lead students to understand that public health is actually a transdisciplinary approach to issues that face populations,” Siqueira said. “So instead of considering public health as another discipline within the health sciences, we try to show that it's actually transversal — meaning that it cuts across most areas of our society that we're concerned about, from poverty to income inequality, to social distribution of diseases, infectious disease, and chronic disease.
The Importance of Inclusivity and Diversity in Public Health
Inclusivity and diversity are essential components of effective public health practice and are another key focus in the new text. According to Siqueira, today's students have a more nuanced understanding of gender, race, and nationality. The authors of the 7th edition felt it was important for the text to address these issues in a contemporary and updated way.
“We are living with new ideas that have become pretty much mainstream among our students regarding gender, race, and nationality. I believe this book tries to address all those in a different way — a more updated way,” Siqueira said.
“The content fits the discourse and the thinking of many students about social problems and public health problems, which include diversity and the need to include populations that were not included in the debate before.
“We are in a different phase of our society,” he continued, “and it requires that we are much more concerned about who's speaking about what and in what language. We now have a variety of sexual, gender, and racial identities that have to be included, and we try to do that in this new edition.”
Toward a Broad and Holistic View of Public Health
The interaction among science, societal values and political realities is a delicate dance. In the conclusion of the book preface, the authors recognize this unease while urging readers to stay the course.
“Acknowledging this inherent tension, we endeavor to navigate the nuances of the scientific and political spheres, illuminating the intersections of policy decisions and public health imperatives,” the authors wrote. “In unveiling the complexities of public health, we invite our readers on a journey of discovery — one that is as enlightening as it is enriching, as contentious as it is captivating.”
In his interview with the Jones & Bartlett Learning blog, Siqueira re-emphasized this sentiment.
“We hope that this book will be useful for the new generations of public health practitioners, to help them develop a broad and holistic view of public health,” he said.
Schneider’s Introduction to Public Health
The authors of the seventh edition of Schneider’s Introduction to Public Health bring this classic text into a new era of learning and teaching. In addition, the book now clearly aligns with CEPH criteria.
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