Integrating behavioural, biomedical, and social processes in resilience and health research over the human lifecourse

Abstract

Though the behavioural and social sciences have made substantive contributions to resilience-and-health-related research to date, that progress includes discrete resilience definitions that reflect academic disciplines, disease or wellness contexts, and the life course stages (e.g., childhood, adulthood, seniors) in which the studies were conducted (Infurna, 2021). These multiple conceptualizations are not in one accord; nevertheless, they share core elements (Infurna, 2021) that resonate with the NIH definition. We posit that the NIH Resilience Framework provides behavioural and social sciences researchers a unique opportunity to collaborate more closely across their disciplines and that increased integration of behavioural, biomedical, and sociological data can lead to more synergistic contributions to scientific knowledge on resilience and health. Space limitations preclude us from a comprehensive review and synthesis of the many behavioural and social sciences perspectives on resilience generated from NIH-funded projects. Instead, we argue our premise by reexamining, through the lens of the NIH Resilience Framework, projects awarded through an earlier NIH-wide initiative to integrate behavioural and social approaches with biometric data. Specifically, this initiative commenced in 2016, when nine NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices issued a funding opportunity for cooperative projects to develop interdisciplinary scientific frameworks to elucidate mechanisms and processes contributing to resilience that ultimately were relevant across various health contexts, conditions, and general well-being. The Funding Opportunity Announcement, 'Advancing Basic Behavioural and Social Research on Resilience: An Integrative Science Approach (UG3/UH3; PAR-16-326)', invited applications that proposed to examine multiple contexts and outcomes individually, as well as to collaborate incorporating common theoretical conceptualizations and measures, allowing for comparisons among projects and future collaborative projects capitalizing on common data elements. A finite funding pool allowed for four meritoriously scored cooperative projects that were funded beginning in 2017 by the National Cancer Institute (NCI),

Conceptualizing a resilience research framework at The National Institutes of Health

“…That multipronged, complementary approach includes prevention or mitigation of the risks, strengthening of the system towards resilience outcomes, and application of treatment regimens when/if needed (Figure 2). This special issue provides examples of the concept of resilience with respect to sleep and physical activity (Baumgartner, 2023;Guida et al, 2023); as well as behavioural and social processes of resilience across the life-course (Elwood et al, 2023). This special issue also explores resilience research in Military populations (McClung et al, 2023;Polusny & Erbes, 2023), both from the study design perspective and from an outcome's perspective.…”

“…This special issue provides examples of the concept of resilience with respect to sleep and physical activity (Baumgartner, 2023; Guida et al., 2023); as well as behavioural and social processes of resilience across the life‐course (Elwood et al., 2023). This special issue also explores resilience research in Military populations (McClung et al., 2023; Polusny & Erbes, 2023), both from the study design perspective and from an outcome's perspective.…”

Next steps: Operationalizing resilience research

“…In general, resilience outcomes are dynamic, and some researchers suggest that biological time, with respect to resilience, is best considered as a nonlinear, helical concept (Varadhan, 2022). As such, the challenge for investigators is to design resilience studies with appropriate consideration of design elements that can capture or Several manuscripts in this Resilience Research Special Supplement acknowledge the challenges associated with identifying NIHfunded studies that meet the criteria for resilience research (Baumgartner et al, 2023;Elwood et al, 2023;Guida et al, 2023). This is, in part, due to two major misconceptions that hinder the advancement of the science of resilience.…”

“…Several manuscripts in this Resilience Research Special Supplement acknowledge the challenges associated with identifying NIH‐funded studies that meet the criteria for resilience research (Baumgartner et al., 2023; Elwood et al., 2023; Guida et al., 2023). This is, in part, due to two major misconceptions that hinder the advancement of the science of resilience.…”