Supporting collaboration and learning to encourage the application of complexity science methods to known and emerging health and health system challenges.
The Special Interest Group brings together a diverse group of over 30 researchers from academic institutions based in the UK and internationally, with a common interest in the application of methods to study the complex systems that influence health, including through applications in the fields of behavioural science, epidemiology, health systems research, public health and mathematical modelling among many others.
The Complexity Science and Health Special Interest Group aims to promote awareness and understanding, and the application of, a full range of methods in the broad field of complexity science to support action on known and emerging health and health system challenges. Specifically, our interest is in systems thinking and modelling of complex systems that influence health. We aim to advance work in this area by promoting knowledge exchange about complexity science methods – which include system dynamics, agent-based modelling and network methods and their uses. We also aim to support collaborative work to apply to the complex systems that affect health. Our work spans the study of health systems, socio-ecological systems, and food systems – among others.
The Group’s members are motivated by a belief that these methods offer important and novel insights in terms of characterising complex systems and responding to challenges that affect health that other methods more typically used for health and health systems research do not.
Special Interest Group holds seminars approximately quarterly. The purpose of these events is to discuss methods, and share research in progress and final research findings from projects applying complexity science methods to health and health systems research questions applied to topics of collective interest in an open and collaborative setting. Details of past and planned future meetings are posted here, where relevant permission is given by speakers.
To ensure the most productive discussions, meetings are closed: to join the list of prospective attendees for events, please contact [email protected] and [email protected] with a brief summary of your experience and interests in complexity science for health and health systems. We would be especially interested to hear from you if you have new and/or innovative work applying complexity science methods that you would like to share.
General events:
- Applied Systems Thinking for Health Systems and Public Health Research, 2018 – recordings of individual talks at this whole-day conference at LSHTM, which covered a range of complexity science methods as applied to health systems research questions, are available to view online.
This site is periodically updated to collate resources relevant to teaching and application of complexity science methods in health. Please click the tab above for more details.
Teaching and training resources
This section links out to a selection of relevant training resources hosted externally. These are provided for information – we do not quality appraise the content of courses posted and are not responsible for their delivery. Please refer to the websites in question for further information.
Key papers and reviews
General issues and concepts:
- Implications of a complexity perspective for systematic reviews and guideline development in health decision making
- Square peg in a round hole: re-thinking our approach to evaluating health system strengthening in low-income and middle-income countries
- Agent-Based Modelling in Public Health: Current Applications and Future Directions
- System Dynamics Modelling for Public Health: Background and Opportunities
- Re-energising the way we manage change in healthcare: the case for soft systems methodology and its application to evidence-based practice
- Mathematical modelling for health systems research: a systematic review of system dynamics and agent-based models
Primers on specific methods:
The Special Interest Group is hosted at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). It brings together a diverse group of over 30 researchers from academic institutions based in the UK and internationally, with a common interest in the application of methods to study the complex systems that influence health, including through applications in the fields of behavioural science, epidemiology, health systems research, public health and mathematical modelling among many others.
Topic areas of interest to the group include using complexity science methods to:
- model ex-ante and ex-post policy evaluation of health and health system interventions;
- model demand for, and supply of, health services;
- explore the links between health and health systems and wider systems with which they interact including socio-ecological systems (e.g. food, climate)
- understand risks that operate at different system levels (e.g. the influence of shocks/interventions at national level on regional or local systems)
- scale up models
- study health system resilience to shocks/compound shocks
We are interested in how these models can be used to support decision making (including through economic evaluation), and in understanding how best to engage stakeholders in model development and use.
Special interest group members are engaged in a variety of projects applying complexity science methods. Please click on the links to find out more.