Developing a Personalized Integrative Obesity-Coaching Program: A Systems Health Perspective

Current obesity management strategies are failing to achieve sustainable and favorable long-term results. We propose a more personalized, dynamic, and systemic perspective on the interactions of key determinants and coaching advice on obesity. The aim of this study was to use a systems view on overweight, complexity science, and a transdisciplinary process to develop a five-year personalized integrative obesity-coaching and research program. Managers, medical specialists, clinical psychologists, dieticians, physical- and psychomotor therapists, and lifestyle coaches aligned their perspectives and objectives with experts in systems thinking and systems biology. A systems health model of obesity was used to identify the causal relations of variables with the most influence on obesity. The model helped to align and design a personalized integrative obesity-coaching program and to identify the key variables to monitor the progress and to adjust the personalized program, depending on the goals and needs of the participant. It was decided to use subtyping of participants by a systems biologist, based on traditional Chinese medicine symptoms, as a novel method to personalize the intervention. The collaborative transdisciplinary approach based upon a systems view on obesity was successful in developing a personalized and adaptive five-year obesity-coaching and research program.

Understanding Diverse Bilingual Learners

The chapter synthesizes findings from diverse disciplinary perspectives to make the case that we need a new lens to better serve the diversity of bilingual learners. Drawing upon theories and findings from studies by educators, child developmentalists, and neuroscientists, but moving beyond any one disciplinary perspective, the authors aim to create a unity of new knowledge developed of theories from across disciplines. This approach is exactly what is needed to address the complexity of factors surrounding bilingual learners. Taking a transdisciplinary approach will allow us to move closer toward an understanding of the many factors affecting bilingual children and families, and this new knowledge can be applied to promote their educational and lifelong success.

Developing know-how to deal with trash

This paper aims to analyze a pedagogical practice seeking to understand its potential for promoting a critical reflection on the topic of Waste. The practice was developed within the scope of the discipline of Science and Decolonizing Cultures offered in the Remote Teaching model, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the Graduate Program in Scientific and Environmental Education of a Federal University. For this, evaluations made by scholarship holders of the Institutional Program of Initiation to Teaching scholarships were taken as data, who after watching the video, answered the following question: what are the positive points and points to be improved in practice. Therefore, this work fits into the Qualitative Research Methodology and the responses were analyzed using Content Analysis and, more specifically, thematic categorization. After the analysis, it was possible to find three categories which are: “Poem as an enhancer of practice”, “Transdisciplinary approach” and “Problematization”. Thus, it is possible to consider that the practice fulfilled its role to promote a critical reflection on the theme of garbage since it was based on Critical Environmental Education and brought art to problematize issues related to the theme, causing contextualized reflections that transcend how the theme is commonly addressed.

The social dynamics in establishing complex community climate change initiatives: the case of a community fridge in Scotland

Multiple factors are involved in community change processes, yet understanding how factors interact to shape these complex social processed is limited. This has important implications for both research and sustainability practice. This study examines key social dynamics in establishing complex community change initiatives using an in-depth action-oriented transdisciplinary approach with a case study of the development of a community fridge. Four critical social dynamics were identified: reinforcing interpretations, reinforcing interconnections, re-alignment of identities, and quality social relations involving multiple normative facets converging and diverging in different ways as the process unfolded. Initially, this led to a degenerative dynamic that heightened tensions between actors; however, re-alignment with wider social identities and expressions of the underlying normative dimensions involved in the initiative, a regenerative dynamic was created. This strengthened the conditions to support shared understanding, learning and enhanced relationships to enable different actors to work together to shape aspects of the initiative. Overall, the study highlights that future community-based change initiatives need to be guided by explicit approaches that work with social relationships, but where these relationships are conceptualised as dynamic normative spaces of interaction and exploration. This can inform understanding on how to develop beneficial reinforcing regenerative dynamics, where advances in one aspect of social relationships within initiatives can begin to reinforce others and ways that increase collective capacity as a whole. Developing this regenerative potential through social relationships within initiatives is thus critical for engaging with complex challenges across communities.

Integration of Negativity, Powerlessness and the Role of the Mediopassive: Resilience Factors and Mechanisms in the Perspective of Religion and Spirituality

Defining psychological resilience while taking into account all of its different facets has proven to be a difficult task, requiring an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach. This article will present some of the theologically relevant current findings of the new research group on “Resilience in Religion and Spirituality” (DFG-FOR 2686) working in cooperation between theology, philosophy, psychosomatic medicine, palliative care, and spiritual care (chapter 1). Even though our project builds on factors and mechanisms of resilience already intensively discussed (chapter 2), we will add some further aspects on resilience as a multidimensional and dynamic process of adaption (chapter 3) and on the integration of negative experiences, of endurance, of the formation of powerlessness and of the mediopassive (chapter 4). This will allow for some prospective considerations on understanding challenges and problems of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (chapter 5).

A physical education/environmental education nexus: Transdisciplinary approaches to curriculum for a sense of belonging

Physical education (PE) is a site that brings categories of difference under erasure, presenting a wicked problem for how a sense of belonging is cultivated for all learners to foster physical activity, health and wellbeing across the lifespan. This article explores how, we, as two teachers of PE, turned to postqualitative and ‘new’ materialist inquiry to generate a sense of belonging within a PE/environmental education nexus. Taking up Karen Barad’s agential realism and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s rhizome, we conceptualise this PE/environmental education nexus as a transdisciplinary approach to curriculum that enacts a knowing/being/thinking/doing between, and across, borders, boundaries, categories, fields and practices. We then show how this nexus was actualised in our teaching practices through two vignettes. As transdisciplinary approaches to curriculum are grounded in the lived, embodied and embedded (micro) politics of location, individuals are imbued with affective obligation to enact affirmative patterns of relating moment-to-moment. This means that a sense of belonging is always imminent, invented and co-created, bringing attention to situated obligations to enact good relations with ourselves, each other and wider planetary systems.

Preserved Consciousness in Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias: Caregiver Awareness and Communication Strategies

Alzheimer’s disease is an insidious onset neurodegenerative syndrome without effective treatment or cure. It is rapidly becoming a global health crisis that is overwhelming healthcare, society, and individuals. The clinical nature of neurocognitive decline creates significant challenges in bidirectional communication between caregivers and persons with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that can negatively impact quality-of-life. This paper sought to understand how and to what extent would awareness training about the levels of consciousness in AD influence the quality-of-life interactions in the caregiver-patient dyad. A literature review of multiple databases was conducted utilizing a transdisciplinary approach. The sum of findings indicates a positive relationship between enhanced caregiver awareness and training, positive interactions, and improved QOL measures among patients and caregivers. A multidirectional relationship was found among healthcare policies, training and education resources, caregivers, and persons with AD. Specifically, the current lack of policy and inadequate training and educational resources has various detrimental effects on patients and caregivers, while improvements in training and education of caregivers yields positive outcomes in communication and QOL. Furthermore, evidence of preserved consciousness in persons with AD was demonstrated from multiple disciplines, including neurobiological, psychological, and biopsychosocial models. The literature further revealed several methods to access the preserved consciousness in persons with AD and related dementias, including sensory, emotional, and cognitive stimulations. The evidence from the literature suggests a reframed approach to our understanding and treatment of persons with AD is not only warranted, but crucial to address the needs of those affected by AD.

“Place Making” and “Place Attachment” as Key Concepts in Understanding and Confronting Contemporary Urban Evictions: The Case of Givat-Amal, Tel Aviv

This article expands on the usability of the concepts of “place making” and “place attachment” as recently developed in urban studies research in the context of housing insecurity of marginalized communities in today’s neo-liberal city. Particularly, against the growing threat of urban evictions, the article utilizes a transdisciplinary approach, showing the relevance of both concepts for (a) a better understanding of bottom-up processes of spatial production and attempts to create a sense of place on the part of such communities, and (b) offering an innovative legal strategy for doing justice to these communities in terms of their compensation rights, especially where a title to land has not been registered on a private basis. These issues are critically examined on the site-related case of the Givat-Amal quarter in Tel Aviv, Israel. This district is now under actual final threat of forced evictions following seven conflicted decades with the state, municipal authorities and private entrepreneurs. Our transdisciplinary study is based on qualitative methodologies in human geography such as fieldwork, visual evidence, and interviews, with a glimpse into philosophy. It is equally based on revisiting “traditional” legal property rights through the lens of post-liberal human rights analysis. The argument can apply to many situations of forced evictions across Africa, Latin America, and the West itself.

Moving beyond Aim Three: a need for a transdisciplinary approach to build capacity for economic evaluations in implementation science

Background Understanding the costs and economic benefits of implementation has been identified by policymakers and researchers as critical to increase the uptake and sustainment of evidence-based practices, but this topic remains relatively understudied. Conducting team science with health economists has been proposed as a solution to increase economic evaluation in implementation science; however, these recommendations ignore the differences in goals and perspectives in these two fields. Our recent qualitative research identified that implementation researchers predominantly approach health economists to examine costs, whereas the majority of health economists expressed limited interest in conducting economic evaluations and a desire to be more integrated within implementation science initiatives. These interviews pointed to challenges in establishing fruitful partnerships when health economists are relegated to the “Third Aim” (i.e., lowest-priority research objective) in implementation science projects by their research partners. Discussion In this debate paper, we argue that implementation researchers and health economists need to focus on team science research principles to expand capacity to address pressing research questions that cut across the two fields. Specifically, we use the four-phase model of transdisciplinary research to outline the goals and processes needed to build capacity in this area (Hall et al., Transl Behav Med 2:415–30, 2012). The first phase focuses on the development of transdisciplinary research teams, including identifying appropriate partners (e.g., considering policy or public health researchers in addition to health economists) and building trust. The conceptual phase focuses on strategies to consider when developing joint research questions and methodology across fields. In the implementation phase, we outline the effective processes for conducting research projects, such as team learning. Finally, in the translation phase, we highlight how a transdisciplinary approach between health economists and implementation researchers can impact real-world practice and policy. Summary The importance of investigating the economic impact of evidence-based practice implementation is widely recognized, but efforts have been limited due to the challenges in conducting team science across disciplines. Training in team science can help advance transdisciplinary efforts, which has the potential to increase the rigor and impact of economic evaluations in implementation science while expanding the roles taken by health economists.