REPLY SD Impact on National Government Policies (SD6110)

[Andrew Jones apjones1 bellsouth.net]

Posted by  "Andrew Jones" <apjones1 at bellsouth.net>
System Dynamicists:

Louis Macovsky wrote "I am curious to know to what extent has SD played, 
if any, in decision making and management at the Federal level other than 
in the military." 

I have been part of several teams in the past four years working with other
systems analysts (Jack Homer of Homer Consulting, Joyce Essien of Emory
University, Gary Hirsch, Kris Wile of the Systems Thinking Collaborative,
Don Seville of Sustainability Institute, Doc Klein of Uncharted Territories,
and Bobby Milstein of CDC) to analyze and improve public health strategies
for clients within different areas of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), the U.S. federal agency dedicated to protecting the health
of its citizens.  

The efforts (some I've worked on and some I have not) have addressed
diabetes, infant mortality, obesity, and (now just beginning) in
hypertension/stroke/heart-disease.

In the diabetes area, where I am most familiar, the modeling and other
efforts have had three main impacts from my perspective:
- increased the support within CDC for primary prevention as a strategy for
addressing diabetes, thus affecting budgeting decisions, 
- changed at least one national long range diabetes goal and improved
goal-setting approaches, and
- created a vehicle (a model-based "learning lab" and stock/flow framework)
for CDC health officers to engage and motivate other stakeholders in the
system such as state-level public health leaders.  The CDC has used
different versions of the learning lab to work with leaders from seven U.S.
states and plan do to extend this approach.

Several citations (for the model insights, not the documentation of impacts
on policy) include:

Jones, Homer, Murphy et al. Understanding Diabetes Population Dynamics
Through Simulation Modeling and Experimentation, American Journal of Public
Health, March 2006.

Milstein, Jones, Homer et al. Finding Plausible Futures for Diabetes
Prevalence: A System Dynamics Analysis of the Healthy People 2010
Objectives, upcoming in Preventing Chronic Disease, summer 2007.

There are also papers in the 2004 and 2006 SDS conference proceedings.

Sincerely,

Drew Jones
Sustainability Institute
Posted by  "Andrew Jones" <apjones1 at bellsouth.net>
posting date  Sat, 16 Dec 2006 13:36:32 -0500