Going ‘trans-E-3-ve’: Educational principles for a new generation of medical students

Educating medical students represents a thrilling yet challenging task. In an era of research breakthroughs but also global health setbacks, there is a risk that scientists and educators focus on highly specialized areas of knowledge, neglecting interrelated systemic issues. Here, we argue that the education of medical students should be embraced using a different strategy remodeled through what we call a 'tranS-E-3-ve' lens. In this new approach, there is no room for scientific reductionism. Instead, health disciplines should be seen from a translational, trans-disciplinary and trans-territorial scope, and should be sensitive to problems and pathways that link global phenomena to health. While current health issues cannot be approached without an equity lens, there are three interconnected dimensions of health that should pervade the content, goals, and design of academic curricula in medical schools: (1) exposome, or the understanding of the environmental contributors to health and disease; (2) identification of the mechanisms involved in the interactions between the elements that constitute complex systems; and (3) 'inner space', or the study of how cells communicate within the human body.