Globally, the aging population is rapidly increasing, making maintaining health in old age a priority on the international agenda. Healthy aging has sought to improve measurement and research regarding aging. The healthcare sector has experienced the need for new models of collaboration for optimizing disciplinary scholars’ inputs and advancing their potential to work collaboratively. The need for collaboration has resulted from realizing the inherent forces with healthcare that interact in complex ways and are linked with increased rates of disciplines involved in healthcare. The field of science is regarded as a collective field in which no single individual can understand the knowledge in full range. Among the three main approaches of collaboration are transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary, which help solve healthcare problems (Bengtson & Settersten, 2016). Understanding the causes and effects of group differences in the healthcare field, such as gerontology, involves using multilevel methods, with disciplinary professionals working collaboratively.
The interdisciplinary approach involves transferring skills from one discipline to another, which results in the complete development of a new discipline. The approach allows disciplinary professionals to inform each other about the work, compare research findings, and discuss issues. The method applies boundaries between disciplines to allow the easy flow of information (Bengtson & Settersten, 2016). However, despite the interdisciplinary method entailing aspects of health inequalities, its complex association amid environmental, social, behavioral, and biological factors which lead to those inequalities are difficult to capture. Therefore, with the emergent prevalence of diseases among the elderly such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer, this method is limited in addressing the issues.
Transdisciplinary involves collaboration among disciplines that occurs entirely outside all disciplines, resulting in forming own logical space. The prime goal for transdisciplinary is to understand the field of healthcare in its complex nature rather than part of it. There has been increasing research on transdisciplinary among healthcare professionals because complex diseases and present disparity in healthcare require a new approach to collaboration (Bengtson & Settersten, 2016). The transdisciplinary model has been advantageous for use over other models in healthcare because it draws together health professionals from numerous and diverse disciplines in a manner that permits solving complex issues. The approach allows professionals to go beyond and operate outside their cultures and boundaries of professionalism, capturing new realities, informing their work mutually, and addressing numerous levels of health issues through their interactions.
Gerontology entails studying the physical aspects of aging, including social and mental implications of aging, political, economic, legal, sociologic, psychologic, clinical, and biologic. According to Bengtson and Settersten (2016), gerontologists become better positioned to theorize aging with an in-depth understanding of age-related problems and extensive knowledge about aging in general. During the theorization of age, gerontologists can provide a successful aging process for older people, plan for relation developments, and work collaboratively with other disciplines to enhance aging reform. Transdisciplinary entails collaboration that goes beyond the traditional disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. Interprofessional collaboration results in a significant impact on promoting healthy aging and quality of life among the elderly.
In conclusion, transdisciplinary help provides a more extensive and organized means of addressing the increased burden and inequalities in healthcare among individuals who are elderly. These teams have the flexibility of creating and expanding upon innovative collaborations within the more extensive and diverse disciplines as it incorporates biological sciences, social, and behavioral aspects to solve complex problems. Transdisciplinary is also associated with creating greater depth and complex research; thereby, its involvement in the research about aging will move the field of gerontology in a future direction. Since transdisciplinary goes beyond traditional boundaries, integration of views and skills from diverse disciplines results in developing innovative ideas that underpin the successful aging process.
Reference
Bengtson, V. L., & Settersten Jr, R. (Eds.). (2016). Handbook of theories of aging. Springer Publishing Company.