From silos to synergy: Faculty Research Day connects disciplines for health impact

24 September 2026 - Wits Faculty of Health Sciences

Delegates gathered at Wits Research Day to explore how collaboration across disciplines can turn research into better, more equitable health outcomes.

More than 1,300 delegates gathered at Wits to explore how closer collaboration between researchers, clinicians, communities and policymakers can translate evidence into better care.

“A patient doesn’t experience HIV, cardiovascular disease, mental health, poverty and climate vulnerability as separate academic disciplines.”

Professor Lynn Morris’s observation captured the challenge at the heart of the Wits Faculty of Health Sciences Research Day on 17 September 2026: how to bring different fields of expertise together around the overlapping health needs of patients and communities.

Held under the theme “From Silos to Synergy: Transdisciplinary Science for Health Impact”, the event brought together more than 1,300 people to share research and examine what it takes to move discoveries into practice.

For clinicians, this means access to evidence they can use in patient care. For policymakers, it means weighing health benefits against costs and unequal access. For researchers, it requires working with people whose expertise and experience may sit well outside their own discipline.

Organising committee chair Dr Prudence Ditlopo said the Faculty had rethought its traditional thematic tracks to encourage conversations across biological, social, technological, environmental and policy research. The programme gave delegates opportunities to explore how these perspectives could inform one another.

Professor Aletta Millen, Assistant Dean for Research, reported more than 500 abstract submissions, most from students and early-career researchers. She acknowledged the mentors supporting this work and encouraged delegates to seek out unfamiliar sessions and colleagues.

Discovery is only part of the work

The Research Day roundtables on health systems and equitable innovation examined a persistent problem: producing evidence does not guarantee that it will reach the people who need it.

Delays in access to COVID-19 and mpox vaccines illustrated the distance between scientific discovery and public benefit. Who sets research priorities, how services are organised and whether innovations are affordable all influence whether advances lead to better care.

Discussions explored the potential of virtual consultations and home-based care to widen access while managing costs. Their usefulness, however, depends on whether underserved communities can access and use the technology. Similarly, local datasets could help make digital pathology tools more relevant to African patients.

These examples highlighted the need to bring population data, health economics, implementation research and community knowledge into decisions about healthcare.

Professor Laetitia Rispel, from the School of Public Health, urged participants to consider their own role in making change possible.

“We need to stop externalising the problem. What’s important is for us to reflect and to look at how our own actions and behaviour can make a difference.”

Who is part of the conversation?

For Professor Stephen Tollman, Director of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC)/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit, known as Agincourt, progress depends on sustained relationships with communities.

“We’re making headway with all these things. But to do so requires cohesion, insight, understanding of communities. They are not monolithic, and they have their own dramas, but they are the critical partners if we’re to achieve our aspirations.”

Professor Flavia Senkubuge, from the University of Pretoria, similarly placed participation at the centre of scientific progress.

“The key predictor of how our future will look is in the manner and in the way that we work together. Yes, it is in our discovery, but it is in the manner that we are discovering, and who we are discovering with, and who we are allowing on that proverbial table.”

Working across disciplines also means building relationships beyond academia. Emeritus Professor Patrick Arbuthnot, from the SAMRC/Wits Antiviral Gene Therapy Research Unit, highlighted the expertise needed to develop research for wider use.

“Transdisciplinary topics need to be addressed. Those include commercialisation of academic research, engagement with policymakers, business developers, with venture capital funders, as well as the basic research activities within the institution.”

Finding connections across fields

New technologies are creating opportunities for researchers to work together. Professor Mary Kawonga, from Community Health in the School of Public Health, pointed to artificial intelligence as one example.

“AI and machine learning allow clinicians, educators and different disciplines to actually do research together.”

Dr Siyabonga Khoza, Head of Chemical Pathology at Wits, emphasised what a shared effort can achieve.

“If you move as a collective, you’ve got a bigger chance of making a huge impact that will be meaningful and that will change people’s lives.”

For delegates, Millen’s invitation offered a practical starting point for building those connections:

“Go to a session that you would not normally attend. Go and listen to somebody you would not necessarily choose to listen to. Speak up. Ask questions. And perhaps by the end of the day you will have discovered something, or someone, that you did not know before.”

The discussions returned to a practical concern: what happens to research once the findings are published? A clinician needs evidence that helps with a treatment decision. A health service needs to know whether it can afford and deliver a new intervention. Communities need a say in whether that intervention meets their needs. Working across these boundaries means bringing those questions into the research from the start.

Recognising research across five tracks

The Research Day awards recognised staff and students for the best oral and poster presentations across five tracks, reflecting the breadth of research presented.

Clinical Excellence, Translational Therapeutics & Implementation

Global Health & Health Systems

Brain Health Across the Lifespan – From Molecules to Society

Digital Health, Innovation, and Ethical AI Use in Health Systems

Precision Medicine, Omics & Computational Health