September 17, 2014
Correspondence: Taghreed Adam adamt@who.int
Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, World Health Organization, 1211, Geneva 27, Switzerland
Health Research Policy and Systems 2014, 12:50 doi:10.1186/1478-4505-12-50
"Systems thinking is, foremost, a mindset that views systems and their sub-components as intimately interrelated and connected to each other, believing that mastering our understanding of how things work lies in interpreting interrelationships and interactions within and between systems [1,3,4]. It is a perspective that deliberately goes beyond events, to look for patterns of behavior and the underlying systemic interrelationships which are responsible for these patterns and their associated events [5]. It embraces the understanding of open systems as complex adaptive systems that are constantly changing, resistant to change, counter-intuitive, non-linear, and where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts [3]."
"The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (hereafter called the Alliance) has been one of the avid advocates for moving this kind of thinking forward, dedicating a number of activities and resources to promote this field among health practitioners and researchers. First, through its flagship publication on “Systems Thinking for Health Systems Strengthening” in 2009 [5], followed by a Journal Supplement in Health Policy and Planning, in 2012, it has sought to generate better understanding of current practices in applying systems thinking for health systems in LMICs [1].
The 2012 supplement demonstrated the dearth of applications that explicitly took into account the complexity and dynamics resulting from intervening in health systems, including evaluations of interventions with system-wide effects [2]. In addition, the very few applications that existed at the time of developing that supplement were predominately from high income countries [1]. These observations revealed the need for concerted efforts to advance the application of systems thinking in health, particularly in LMICs.
In March 2013, the Alliance, in collaboration with Canada’s International Development Research Centre, launched a Call for papers inviting teams of researchers and health practitioners, with particular focus on lead authorship from LMICs, to develop and share applications of systems thinking methods and approaches, culminating in this Series. This whole program of work, which spanned over two and a half years, provided a great opportunity for strengthening programs, policies, and methods in LMICs to enable researchers and decision makers to think through how systems thinking approaches can be applied to their current health systems questions with practical results.
It is worth noting that, while this collection of articles offers innovative and diverse range of applications of systems thinking approaches, methods, and tools, as the Commentary by Peters illustrates [6], these applications by no means capture the entire range of relevant tools and approaches that can be applied."
# The complete electronic version of this article can be found online at: http://www.health-policy-systems.com/content/12/1/50
