Descending from the university Ivory Tower: training future researchers to address applied public health problems
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A renewed vision of public health research training is needed to ensure that future researchers will address complex “real-life” public health (PH) problems. The Strategic Training Program in Transdisciplinary Research on Public Health Interventions : Promotion, Prevention and Public Policy (4P) is an unique research training initiative based on a partnership of Quebec (Canada) universities and the PH milieu. Since 2003, the Program has recruited and funded 60 graduate students from various disciplinary backgrounds (from 6 universities; more than 20 disciplines) to undertake research training focusing on PH interventions. The training Program embeds trainees as research interns in formal PH organizations for up to three years at the doctoral level and 2 years at the postdoctoral level. These organizations act as laboratories for their research and provide mentorship by local PH supervisors. The Program also includes a personalized training plan and a complementary curriculum to develop trainees’ competencies in key areas of population health intervention research. In the context of the evaluation of the efficacy of the 4P Program, administrative data were examined and a survey undertaken among trainees and PH supervisors. Preliminary results show that 51% of the 44 trainees who have completed the Program to date work in university settings and 22% in formal PH organizations. 73% conduct research on PH interventions and 36% use mixed research methods. Current fields of research of former trainees include public policy and decision-making related to health organizations (27%), prevention (18%) and health promotion (16%); 36% do theoretical research. More than half (55%) partner with non-academics (e.g., policy and institutional managers, representatives of community organizations, service users) to conduct research. Survey of former trainees (response rate: 61%) shows that 57% now have an affiliation with applied PH organizations. Results also indicate that the Program has succeeded in promoting the adoption of a broad and transdisciplinary understanding of PH intervention research among trainees, but adaptation of their research questions to the needs of public health organizations and ensuring training about ethics in intervention research remain a challenge. Key message The 4P Training Program in Transdiciplinary Research on Public Health Interventions has succeeded in encouraging graduate students to pursue research careers in public health interventions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.026 | 0.025 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.022 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.018 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.011 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.017 | 0.007 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".