This interdisciplinary imperative challenges what historically has been an increasing disciplinarily focus in infectious disease research. Greater investment in research has succeeded in revealing more detail about diseases within specific disciplines. Yet this arguably has been at the cost of greater disintegration rather than integration among disciplines. The division is widest between the genetic and biological aspects of disease and health on the one hand and the social, economic, political, and physical environmental factors on the other. The disciplinary distinctions within infectious disease research of course belie the true transdisciplinary nature of this and most problems in the global heath and environment arena (59). The above disciplinary divisions largely reflect the gap between disciplines focusing on systems at or below and above the level of the organism or species. The former involve disciplines addressing the genetics, pathogenesis, or immune response within particular organisms (humans, vectors of pathogens), for example, or disease as a statistical phenomena at the species population level (the mainstay of epidemiology). The latter deal with social or ecological phenomena, essentially representing higher levels of biological organization, within which the organism-level processes operate but that also involve many other variables or processes operating on a wide range of biological scales (from genes to the biosphere) characterized by cross-scale influences, and interactions at multiple societal and ecological levels.