When it comes to issues in international public health, the challenge is more than just one of medicine. Solutions require people from multiple disciplines to work together, along with governmental ministries and often non-profit organizations.
Grant Miller, PhD, an associate professor of medicine, has been working on one such challenge – that of micronutrient deficiency in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
“There are at least three ministries that have key responsibility over this area,” Miller says. “We then have to work with an NGO partner, and we have to go out and collect our own data and evaluate how this intervention works.”
Miller works with both the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and he says the institutes play an important role in supporting interdisciplinary collaborations like this one.
“Stanford makes it very easy to do interdisciplinary research,” he says. “I think the pay off is huge, but it’s not an easy thing to do.”
More faculty talk about the value of collaboration in their work as part of the new Stanford Interdisciplinary website.
Previously: New website chronicles tales of collaborative research and Stanford journalist returns to old post in India – and finds health care still lagging
Video by Worldview Stanford
