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Translating systems thinking into practice for community action on childhood obesity

We report on the first 18 months of two communities' efforts using methods inspired by community‐based participatory system dynamics for the development, implementation, and evaluation of whole of community efforts to improve the health of children. We apply Foster‐Fishman's theoretical fr...

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Autores principales: Allender, Steven, Brown, Andrew D., Bolton, Kristy A., Fraser, Penny, Lowe, Janette, Hovmand, Peter
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6900082/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31359617
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/obr.12865
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author Allender, Steven
Brown, Andrew D.
Bolton, Kristy A.
Fraser, Penny
Lowe, Janette
Hovmand, Peter
author_facet Allender, Steven
Brown, Andrew D.
Bolton, Kristy A.
Fraser, Penny
Lowe, Janette
Hovmand, Peter
author_sort Allender, Steven
collection PubMed
description We report on the first 18 months of two communities' efforts using methods inspired by community‐based participatory system dynamics for the development, implementation, and evaluation of whole of community efforts to improve the health of children. We apply Foster‐Fishman's theoretical framework for characterizing systems change to describe the initiatives. Bounding the system began with defining leaders more broadly than standard health interventions to be those who had the ability to change environments to improve health, including food retailers, government, and business, and using high‐quality childhood monitoring data to define the problem. Widespread access to junk food, barriers to physical activity, and efforts to promote health predominantly through programmatic approaches were identified as potential root causes. System interactions existed in the form of relationships between stakeholder groups and organizations. The approach described built new relationships and strengthened existing relationships. Willingness in taking risks, changing existing practice, and redesigning health promotion work to have a community development focus, were levers for change. This approach has resulted in hundreds of community‐led actions focused on changing norms and environments. Insights from this approach may be useful to support other communities in translating systems theory into systems practice. Further empirical research is recommended to explore the observations in this paper.
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spelling pubmed-69000822019-12-20 Translating systems thinking into practice for community action on childhood obesity Allender, Steven Brown, Andrew D. Bolton, Kristy A. Fraser, Penny Lowe, Janette Hovmand, Peter Obes Rev Public Health We report on the first 18 months of two communities' efforts using methods inspired by community‐based participatory system dynamics for the development, implementation, and evaluation of whole of community efforts to improve the health of children. We apply Foster‐Fishman's theoretical framework for characterizing systems change to describe the initiatives. Bounding the system began with defining leaders more broadly than standard health interventions to be those who had the ability to change environments to improve health, including food retailers, government, and business, and using high‐quality childhood monitoring data to define the problem. Widespread access to junk food, barriers to physical activity, and efforts to promote health predominantly through programmatic approaches were identified as potential root causes. System interactions existed in the form of relationships between stakeholder groups and organizations. The approach described built new relationships and strengthened existing relationships. Willingness in taking risks, changing existing practice, and redesigning health promotion work to have a community development focus, were levers for change. This approach has resulted in hundreds of community‐led actions focused on changing norms and environments. Insights from this approach may be useful to support other communities in translating systems theory into systems practice. Further empirical research is recommended to explore the observations in this paper. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019-07-29 2019-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6900082/ /pubmed/31359617 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/obr.12865 Text en © 2019 The Authors Obesity Reviews published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of World Obesity Federation This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
spellingShingle Public Health
Allender, Steven
Brown, Andrew D.
Bolton, Kristy A.
Fraser, Penny
Lowe, Janette
Hovmand, Peter
Translating systems thinking into practice for community action on childhood obesity
title Translating systems thinking into practice for community action on childhood obesity
title_full Translating systems thinking into practice for community action on childhood obesity
title_fullStr Translating systems thinking into practice for community action on childhood obesity
title_full_unstemmed Translating systems thinking into practice for community action on childhood obesity
title_short Translating systems thinking into practice for community action on childhood obesity
title_sort translating systems thinking into practice for community action on childhood obesity
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6900082/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31359617
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/obr.12865
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