Makes the case for systems thinking in an easily accessible form for a broad interdisciplinary audience, including health system stewards, programme implementers, researchers, evaluators, and funding partners.

​​​​This book looks at health policy through the lens of public versus private: population health versus the somatic, social, or emotional experiences of a patient. Rather than presenting policy/ethics as overly technical, this book takes a novel approach of framing public and private health in terms of political philosophy, ethics, and popular examples. Each chapter ties back to the general ethics or political literature as applicable, which are not customarily parts of the current public health curriculum. The author's work on the Orgcomplexity blog has touched on this subject by systemically exploring public policy issues, and the tone of this book mimics the blog with an extension of the arguments.

Systems thinking and modeling have been essential approaches to identifying the drivers of health outcomes and analyzing their complex interrelationships, paving the way to interventions that improve outcomes while minimizing unintended consequences. These methods support interdisciplinary teams in representing and navigating complex systems, thus asking essential 'what-if' questions and serving numerous other goals, from guiding data collection efforts to comparing the perspectives of stakeholders or validating theories. This volume features methodological innovations and applications for several determinants and key global health priority areas. Priority determinants include, but are not limited to, social determinants (e.g., health inequalities), behavioral factors and facets of the healthcare system. Systems thinking and modeling can shed light on how such determinants ultimately shape health outcomes and/or the cost-effectiveness of an intervention. This volume covers several determinants, collectively providing a comprehensive overview of the challenges and applications of systems thinking to public health. This volume will benefit researchers in the fields of public health, systems thinking or modeling. The content is accessible to early-career researchers, such as graduate students, who may choose specific chapters within their areas of interest as part of identifying open challenges to inspire their own research.

To battle the obesity epidemic in America, health care professionals and policymakers need relevant, useful data on the effectiveness of obesity prevention policies and programs. Bridging the Evidence Gap in Obesity Prevention identifies a new approach to decision making and research on obesity prevention to use a systems perspective to gain a broader understanding of the context of obesity and the many factors that influence it.

This book is a primer focusing on systems thinking as it spans the domains of health administration, public health, and clinical practice. Currently, the accrediting commissions within public health, health administration, and nursing are including systems thinking as part of the core competencies in their respective fields and professions. Meanwhile, academic programs do not have the materials, other than journal articles, to give students the requisite understanding of systems thinking as is expected of the next generation of health professionals. This primer is designed to meet that void and serve as a supplemental reading for this important and timely topic. This is the only book of its kind that provides a broad introduction and demonstration of the application of health systems thinking.

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This Systems Thinking Special Issue contains 12 papers on the nature of systems thinking as it applies to systems engineering, systems science, system dynamics, and related fields. Systems thinking can be broadly considered the activity of thinking applied in a systems context, forming a basis for fundamental approaches to several systems disciplines, including systems engineering, systems science, and system dynamics. Although these are somewhat distinct fields, they are bound by common approaches in regard to systems. Whereas systems engineering seeks to apply a multidisciplinary, holistic approach to the development of systems, systems science seeks to understand the basics related to systems of all kinds, from natural to man-made, and system dynamics seeks to understand system structures in order to influence its dynamics. Man-made systems have become more ubiquitous and complex. The study of systems, both natural and engineered, presents new challenges and opportunities to understand emergent, dynamic behaviors that inform the process of sense-making based on systems thinking.