Building a systems thinking prevention workforce

Abstract

In the quest for more effective prevention, health promotion practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in the use of systems thinking to address the complexity of health problems. 1 Systems thinking is drawn from system sciences that are concerned with the interrelationships between system parts where the emphasis is on understanding the functioning whole, rather than focusing on individual components. 2 A systems approach moves the focus of health promotion activities away from a reductionist perspective to a holistic one, looking beyond what may appear to be isolated and independent events. 3 In application,

Building a Prevention System: Infrastructure to Strengthen Health Promotion Outcomes

“…The HTV prevention system may have been strengthened with a master plan and a coordinating mechanism, such as the Australian National Preventive Health Agency that existed from 2011 to 2014 to lead the national health promotion infrastructure [ 7 ]. Additionally, the mapping, safe-to-fail experiments and other systems practices that had been applied in HTC at the micro-level, had not been used at the macro-level, reinforcing that the blocks had not been viewed holistically by HTV [ 42 ].…”

“…Their work was adaptive within the local context, consistent with emergent practice [ 35 ]. They were testing systems thinking tools and skills to achieve health-promoting goals [ 41 , 42 ]. These previously inexperienced systems thinkers were grasping the new prevention agenda [ 43 ].…”

“…Previous research on adopting systems approaches has examined the micro-level of community-based practice in HTC [ 5 , 41 , 42 , 43 ] and other papers explore various aspects of HTV [ 14 , 16 , 35 , 41 , 43 , 44 ]. This paper is the first to appreciate the macro-level architecture of system design, examining how the HTV prevention system was constructed and its strengths and limitations.…”

Understanding Prevention Networks in a Local Government Area: Insights From a Social Network Analysis Among Western Australian Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity Prevention Programs

“…The synthesis of current prevention approaches also presents an opportunity for extending the capabilities of organisations by allowing skills and resources to be better harnessed to meet the diverse needs of a population, creating an environment that supports positive health outcomes (Anaf et al, 2014;Corbin, Jones, & Barry, 2018). A whole of system approach using a multi-faceted interconnected response would certainly provide the greatest opportunity to address risk factors and improve health of the community (Bensberg et al, 2020) The researched network consisted of 15 identified organisations all working in physical activity, nutrition and obesity. Based on Borgatti's Theory, collaboration between organisations in this network's was lower than expected (Borgatti et al, 2018).…”

“…Systems thinking has emerged within public health as a method to explore the interconnected factors which contribute to prevention, thus improving understanding of an issue in a broader context (Bensberg, Allender, & Sacks, 2020;Valente, 2010 ). Systems thinking can determine the relationships between actors (e.g.…”