Research in Our Third Century
As Thomas Jefferson University enters its third century of education, research and care, it’s inspiring to consider all that this institution has achieved since its founding in 1824. Jefferson has grown from one of the nation’s first and most innovative medical colleges to a multifaceted national research university, healthcare system and nonprofit health insurance plan.
Today’s Jefferson is driving major advances in biomedical research, from discovery science through translation to clinical trials and population science. Our impact in biomedical sciences was made clear this spring, when Jefferson’s Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center became a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.
You’ll observe throughout this magazine, we are also creating and applying new knowledge across a broad range of disciplines and topics: from sociology and history to finance and business management; from the use of artificial intelligence in health care to the effects of art on communities; from the link between food and structural racism to advances in material sciences and the design of tomorrow’s cities.
While traditionally some challenges are best addressed by working within a single discipline and within the traditional research categories of basic, translational, clinical and applied, Jefferson’s way of envisioning research has evolved. In particular, as our academic range has expanded over the years — especially since our 2017 merger with Philadelphia University — we have increasingly invested in transdisciplinary, team-based studies and multifaceted projects.
We’ve made those investments because we know that addressing the most significant social, economic or technical challenges our society faces requires robust collaboration — across departments, disciplines, professions and institutions. And it’s clear that fulfilling the potential inherent in the research discoveries we make often requires us to hasten the translation and application of new knowledge and methods.
Thus, guided by the principle of collaboration, we’re leveraging current strengths and building new teams to support our research and educational mission. We’re asking faculty and students to pose the question, “How might my work influence or be useful to researchers in other fields?” — and we’re providing resources for cross-disciplinary pilot studies. We’re building new programmatic bridges between researchers and scholars on our two campuses. And we are nurturing deeper connections with the many communities that Jefferson serves so that we can better understand and address the specific components of the most pressing challenges they face.
For example, we are investing more time and resources to tackle the problem of health inequities and disparities in care. Today, Jefferson has more than 150 funded research and service activities focusing on health inequity challenges that range from substance use disorder to food insecurity to healthcare access — and beyond. Our research and service teams are working in communities across Pennsylvania and New Jersey, collaborating with a host of local and regional organizations. Together, through multidisciplinary teamwork and multi-organization partnerships, we are striving to more fully understand how inequities and disparities develop and persist — and to create and pursue strategies that remove those barriers to health and well-being for our patients and our broader community.
In these ways and many others, Jefferson is leveraging its 200 year-old foundation of discovery and application to help define what research and scholarship will look like in coming decades — all in service of our mission to improve lives of people throughout our region and around the world.
