Challenges faced by multidisplinary new investigators on addressing grand challenges in global health

BACKGROUND: The grand challenges approach aims to spark innovative and transformative strategies to overcome barriers to significant global health issues. Grand Challenges Canada endorses an ‘Integrated Innovation™’ approach that focuses on the intersection of scientific/technological, social and business innovation. In this article we explore themes emerging from a dialogue between the authors, who are multidisciplinary recipients of the ‘Rising Stars in Global Health’ award from Grand Challenges Canada, regarding benefits of engaging in integrated innovation research, and recommendations for how this approach may develop in the future. DISCUSSION: Our dialogue followed a semi-structured interview format that addressed three topics: 1) reflections on applying an Integrated Innovation™ approach for global health; 2) thoughts on participation in the Grand Challenges 2012 meeting; and 3) authors’ visions of Grand Challenges Canada and the Grand Challenge movement towards 2020. The dialogue was transcribed verbatim and we used thematic analysis techniques to identify, analyze and report themes in the data. Benefits of working using the Grand Challenges approach centered on two themes: a) the potential for scientific breakthrough and b) building interdisciplinary collaborations and a community of scholars. Challenges and opportunities for Grand Challenges in moving forward included: a) capacity building, particularly regarding Integrated Innovation™ and scale-up planning; b) interdisciplinary and international mentorship for new investigators; and c) potential for future commercialization. CONCLUSIONS: Our discussion highlighted that Integrated Innovation™ offers the opportunity to develop new theories, methods and approaches to global health while simultaneously fostering a collaborative spirit grounded in international, interdisciplinary collaborations. However, the arguable over-emphasis on corporatization poses a major challenge for new investigators. We propose a more balanced way forward that can harness technology to foster mentorship across time and space to support the development of such skills and ideas among new investigators.