are challenged to cross the boundaries between human and natural sciences to generate results that could not have been attained using a disciplinary or sectoral approach alone. Scientists trained for many years in one discipline must first learn to acknowledge the strengths of other approaches. University curricula, however, rarely enable scientists to communicate with other disciplines, and researchers first need to acquire their own experiences and skills (Conrad et al., 2009; Min et al., 2013). Max-Neef (2005) wrote that this should not represent a problem as long as the higher education received was coherent with the challenge. This is, unfortunately, not the case, since monodisciplinary education is still widely predominant in all universities.
It is encouraging to see that donors explicitly ask for inter- and transdisciplinary research. However, the establishment of these processes requires some additional investments, and donors do not yet readily give more time or money. In any case, transdisciplinary research with its iterative cycles between innovation, application and validation is an integral part of One Health approaches.
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