Methods & Issues Seminars: System dynamics modelling for population health

Thursday, 28 June 2012
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Location: At Room 730-373, Building 730, Tāmaki Innovation Campus

Speaker: Dr Alex Macmillan (MBChB,MPH)
Department:

Many current and pending public health issues are characterised by complexity and feedback, raising major issues for effective policy making. These complex problems (such as obesity, health inequities, increasing health system costs) have proved resistant to policy interventions.

To understand effective policy levers, models are needed that can incorporate complex non-linear causal processes, and simulate policy effects on a range of outcomes dynamically over time. System dynamics (SD) modelling is well designed for this purpose.

Senior lecturer Alex Macmillan will outline the underlying theoretical principles of SD modelling, including considerations of causality. Using examples from population health (in its broadest sense), she will demonstrate what SD modelling is and where and why it can be useful, as well as identify important challenges to its wider use in population health research. Examples will be included from health systems research, environmental health and chronic disease.

Speaker: Dr Alex Macmillan (MBChB,MPH) is a senior lecturer in environmental health at the School of Population Health, with a particular interest in the complex links between health, equity and environmental sustainability in cities. She has recently completed her doctoral thesis using participatory SD modelling to improve transport decision-making for population health.

Chaired by Prof Mark Elwood, Professor of Cancer Epidemiology, School of Population Health