Place And Health As Complex Systems

The history of public health has focused on direct relationships between problems and solutions: vaccinations against diseases, ad campaigns targeting risky behaviors. But the accelerating pace and mounting intricacies of our lives are challenging the field to find new scientific methods for studying community health. The complexities of place (COP) approach is emerging as one such promising method. Place and Health as Complex Systems demonstrates how COP works, making an empirical case for its use in for designing and implementing interventions. This brief resource reviews the defining characteristics of places as dynamic and evolving social systems, rigorously testing them as well as the COP approach itself. The study, of twenty communities within one county in the Midwest, combines case-based methods and complexity science to determine whether COP improves upon traditional statistical methods of public health research. Its conclusions reveal strengths and limitations of the approach, immediate possibilities for its use, and challenges regarding future research. Included in the coverage: Characteristics of places and the complexities of place approach. The Definitional Test of Complex Systems. Case-based modeling using the SACS toolkit. Methods, maps, and measures used in the study. Places as nodes within larger networks. Places as power-based conflicted negotiations. Place and Health as Complex Systems brings COP into greater prominence in public health research, and is also valuable to researchers in related fields such as demography, health geography, community health, urban planning, and epidemiology.

Currently, population health science is an integral part of global academic curricula. For over a century, the principles of the reductionist paradigm have guided population health curricula, training, research, and action. Researchers continue to draw upon these principles when theorizing, conceptualizing, designing studies, analyzing, and devising interventions to tackle complex population health problems. However, unresolved impasses in addressing pressing population health challenges have catalyzed calls for the integration of complex-systems-science-grounded approaches into population health science. Mounting evidence denotes that a complex systems paradigm can bring about dramatic, multipronged changes for education and training, and lead to innovative research, interventions, and policies. Despite the large and untapped promise of complex systems, the haphazard knowledge base from which academics, researchers, students, policymakers, and practitioners can draw has slowed their integration into the population health sciences. This volume fulfils this growing need by providing the knowledge base necessary to introduce a holistic complex systems paradigm in population health science. As such, it is the first comprehensive book in population health science that meaningfully integrates complex systems theory, methodology, modeling, computational simulation, and real-world applications, while incorporating current population health theoretical, methodological and analytical perspectives. It is intended as a programmatic primer across a broad spectrum of population health stakeholders: from university professors and graduate students, to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.

This book is an introduction to health care as a complex adaptive system, a system that feeds back on itself. The first section introduces systems and complexity theory from a science, historical, epistemological, and technical perspective, describing the principles and mathematics. Subsequent sections build on the health applications of systems science theory, from human physiology to medical decision making, population health and health services research. The aim of the book is to introduce and expand on important population health issues from a systems and complexity perspective, highlight current research developments and their implications for health care delivery, consider their ethical implications, and to suggest directions for and potential pitfalls in the future.

This unique title explores complex systems in clinical medicine and the subsequent implementation of that knowledge into practice. Written conversationally and as a reflection on the journey of learning about complex systems, the book explores how knowledge of these systems can be applied to four key roles in academic medicine: clinical practice, education, research, and administration. Further, this title emphasizes how gaining an understanding of complex systems can greatly help a physician deal with the many challenges found in academic medicine. Unlike other books on complexity in medicine, which tend to focus on only one aspect of the management of patients, Complex Systems in Medicine deals with the multifaceted roles of a physician. The approach in this book is uniquely qualitative rather than mathematical, and is written to make it not only of interest to physicians, trainees, and allied health providers, but also to make it more accessible to a non-medical audience. The inclusion of personal anecdotes by the author provides concrete examples of the application of knowledge of complex systems in academic medicine. A first-of-its-kind contribution to the literature, Complex Systems in Medicine: A Hedgehog’s Tale of Complexity in Clinical Practice, Research, Education, and Management is not only a novel reference for medical professionals, it is an accessible tool for the non-medical audience hoping to learn more about complex systems and their direct relevance to medicine, a field that deals with the infinite variety of humans and their ills. It illustrates the consequences of the interactive elements of patient care that make medicine both a science and an art.

This timely resource provides a practical introduction to equipment health monitoring (EHM) to ensure the cost effective operation and control of critical systems in defense, industrial, and healthcare applications. This book highlights how to frame health monitoring design applications within a system engineering process, to ensure an optimized EHM functional architecture and practical algorithm design. This book clarifies the need for intelligent diagnostics and proposed health monitoring framework. Machine learning for health monitoring, including feature extraction, data visualization, model boundaries and performance is presented. Details about monitoring aircraft engines and model based monitoring systems are described in detail. Packed with two full chapters of case studies within industrial and healthcare settings, this book identifies key problems and provides insightful techniques for solving them. This resource provides a look into the future direction in health monitoring and emerging developments within sensing technology, big data analytics, and advanced computing capabilities.

This visionary reframing of health and healthcare uses a complexity science approach to building healthcare systems that are accessible, effective, and prepared for change and challenges. Its holistic map for understanding the human organism emphasizes the interconnectedness of the individual’s physical, psychological, cognitive, and sociocultural functioning. Applications of this approach are described in primary, specialist, and emergency care and at the organizational and policy levels, from translating findings to practice, to problem solving and evaluation. In this model, the differences between disease and illness and treating illness and restoring health are not mere wordplay, but instead are robust concepts reflecting real-world issues and their solutions. Based on the Proceedings of the 1st International Conference of Systems and Complexity for Healthcare, topics covered include: • Coping with complexity and uncertainty: insights from studying epidemiology in family medicine • Anticipation in complex systems: potential implications for improving safety and quality in healthcare • Monitoring variability and complexity at the bedside • Viewing mental health through the lens of complexity science • Ethical complexities in systems healthcare: what care and for whom? • The value of systems and complexity thinking to enable change in adaptive healthcare organizations supported by informatics • If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the theory: implications for health system reform The Value of Systems and Complexity Sciences for Healthcare will interest and inspire health and disease researchers, health professionals, health care planners, health system financiers, health system administrators, health services administrators, health professional educators, and, last but not least, current and future patients.

Containing papers presented at the 2016 New Forest Conference on Complex Systems, this multi-disciplinary book presents new approaches for resolving complex issues that cannot be resolved using conventional mathematical or software models. Complex Systems occur in an infinite variety of problems encompassing fields as diverse as economics, the environment, humanities, social and political sciences, physical sciences and engineering. The papers in the book cover such topics as: Complex business processes; Supply chain complexity; Complex adaptive software; Management of complexity; Complexity in social systems; Complexity in engineering; Complex issues in biological and medical sciences; Complex energy systems Complexity and evolution.

This book aims to develop models and modeling techniques that are useful when applied to all complex systems. It adopts both analytic tools and computer simulation. The book is intended for students and researchers with a variety of backgrounds.