Meanings and limits concerned to the strategies of disciplinary integration: a reflection about the contributions from the workers' health field

摘要

Although the terms multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are often used in the literature of the public health field, and more specifically in the worker's health and environmental health fields, there is a relative lack of texts which deepen their theoretical-conceptual discussion and methodological implications. This article has a theoretical and exploratory character and intends to give some conceptual support to discuss the importance of integrating disciplines, pointing out some challenges and perspectives for the implementation of academic works with these characteristics. The article is based on a critical revision of some authors, on our personal paths in multiprofissional research groups, on the reflection about the evolution and the characteristics of the worker's health area, as well as on a study with researchers of different Brazilian research institutions of Public Health who work with workers´ and environmental health issues. The results of this study generated a master's degree dissertation (Almeida, 2000).