Planning, implementing, and evaluating an online group‐model‐building workshop during the COVID‐19 pandemic: celebrating successes and learning from shortcomings

Complex systems and participatory approaches to address maternal health disparities: Findings from a system dynamics group model building project in North Texas

“…Finally, it appears that participants were indeed able to effectively engage in systems thinking, which is also consistent with workshop evaluation results elsewhere (Brown et al, 2022). The feedback loops within the CLD captured complex interactions among many of the causal forces identified by participants, and these interactions exhibited circular causality.…”

“…Second, Guynn et al (2022) reported that the majority of the studies identified in the scoping review did not involve community stakeholders in the modeling process. In the current study, participating stakeholders, who included mothers from the community, reported that their participation in this workshop increased their insight into factors driving racial disparities in maternal mortality, as well as self‐reported knowledge increases in systems thinking, SD tools (e.g., CLDs), and the application of systems science to intervention development (Brown et al, 2022). Further, all participants reported on a postworkshop survey their intentions to apply the insights gained from this workshop into their own work (Brown et al, 2022).…”

“…In the current study, participating stakeholders, who included mothers from the community, reported that their participation in this workshop increased their insight into factors driving racial disparities in maternal mortality, as well as self‐reported knowledge increases in systems thinking, SD tools (e.g., CLDs), and the application of systems science to intervention development (Brown et al, 2022). Further, all participants reported on a postworkshop survey their intentions to apply the insights gained from this workshop into their own work (Brown et al, 2022). For some participants, this meant incorporating conversations about the complex interactions driving disparate maternal health outcomes into their program and service delivery planning efforts.…”

“…A pilot SD GMB session was facilitated by the research team and involved a group of stakeholders with a mixture of Black women with lived experience in life‐threatening pregnancy complications, and subject‐matter experts with knowledge of, and practitioners engaged in work with, Black maternal health disparities. A detailed overview of the SD GMB session has been published elsewhere (Brown et al, 2022).…”

“…Additionally, Microsoft PowerPoint was used as a key facilitation tool, as the investigators: (1) established “Zoom Housekeeping” rules; (2) provided a background on the problem, including persistent outcomes and disparities in maternal health outcomes, current approaches to the problem, and rationale for new approaches, grounded in systems thinking; and (3) disseminated instructions for each of the key phases of the project. The approach described below is grounded in established qualitative SD GMB approaches (Hovmand, 2014) that have been adapted for the virtual format (Zimmermann et al, 2021), which have been described more thoroughly in the context of the current study elsewhere (Brown et al, 2022).…”