The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the World Health Organization concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Additional support was provided by the Department for International Development (DFID) through a grant (PO5467) to Future Health Systems research consortium.Īll rights reserved. This work was coordinated by the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, the World Health Organization, with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. Systems thinking and systems models devise strategies to account for real world complexities. Systems thinking is a core skill in public health and helps health policymakers build programs and policies that are aware of and prepared for unintended consequences.Īn important part of systems thinking is the practice to integrate multiple perspectives and synthesize them into a framework or model that can describe and predict the various ways in which a system might react to policy change. If an outcome depends on many interacting and adaptive parts and actors the outcome cannot be analyzed or predicted with traditional statistical methods. Problems in public health and health policy tend to be complex with many actors, institutions and risk factors involved.
![causal loop diagram stella architect causal loop diagram stella architect](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DCr68OEWzec/sddefault.jpg)
This course provides an introduction to systems thinking and systems models in public health.