Collaborate or Stagnate: Break Down Silos to Achieve Success

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The 2023 Entomological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting was held in National Harbor, Maryland, and brought together more than 3,600 experts in the entomological sciences. In the spirit of the meeting’s mission, “Advancing Entomology’s Impact on People and Policy,” a group of past and present ESA science policy fellows organized the symposium “A Dash of Epidemiology, a Skosh of Entomology, and a Dollop of Science Policy Is a Recipe for Success.” Established in 2014, the ESA’s Science Policy Fellowship is a two-year science communication and policy advocacy training program that unites diverse ESA colleagues to address and advocate for entomology-focused initiatives. The fellows who organized this symposium (classes of 2016–2022) have broad expertise in epidemiology, urban entomology, medical entomology, commercial and consumer insecticide product development, structural pest management, and vector control training. A symposium on collaboration was developed as they noted isolation within their respective disciplines and a shared desire to break the cycle of working in silos to advance comprehensive and collaborative entomological work and policy. However, they also acknowledged that working across disciplines is not straightforward. Therefore, the symposium organizers have prepared this short article to address the problem (within-discipline isolation) identified within our interactive symposium. We provide examples of successful partnerships to inspire readers to integrate collaboration into their everyday work, while also summarizing multidisciplinary panelist advice related to becoming more collaborative across the workforce continuum.