From Silos of Care to Circles of Collaboration

Over the past 20 years, my work at the University of Minnesota has focused on creating opportunities and venues where faculty and clinicians escape the disciplinary silos that have dominated the landscape of academic institutions and healthcare for perhaps centuries to collaborate on education, research, and innovative and holistic ways of caring for people and communities. The global growth of integrative health and medicine comes at a time when there is also a growing understanding of the necessity of team-based, collaborative care and interprofessional education. This is due in part to a recognition that no single discipline alone can provide care to patients who have complex, chronic disease and that health professionals are better prepared to work in teams if they have been educated in settings where they have learned together as students. The shift away from the solo principal investigator to team-based research is another reflection of the phenomena of silos breaking down into circles of collaborat...