One important part of a sustainable world is the flourishing of food systems, urban design, and public health infrastructure that helps society prevent and treat chronic diseases — such as type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes is projected to affect one out of three Americans born in 2003. In 2002 itcost the U.S. $132 billion.
Sustainability Institute has been hired by the Division of Diabetes Translation in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta to use systems thinking approaches and system dynamics simulation modeling to help them and their state-level colleagues address the growing burden of diabetes.
The team constructed a simulation model and model-based learning laboratory that help diverse public health leaders understand the long term effects of a range of possible interventions, from better diabetes care to more extensive detection of undiagnosed patients to improving the living conditions and personal capacities that are driving the obesity crisis.
In 2008, the CDC System Dynamics team, including four members of our diabetes team and Kris Wile from the related work on Cardiovascular Disease, accepted the "ASysT Prize" for a suite of projects on systems thinking in health issues, including the diabetes and cardiovascular work. As they say, "The ASysT Prize is an annual award for a significant accomplishment achieved through the application of systems thinking to a problem of US national significance in the area of national security, homeland security, energy, environment, health care or education." $20k goes to the CDC Foundation to do more in this area.
And, in other results, our partnership in this effort with health leaders in the state of Minnesota has helped to yield a new bill to fund primary prevention. The Statewide Health Improvement Plan, (SHIP -- Senate File 3780) has PASSED and was signed into law as part of health care reform legislation based on recommendations from the Governor's Health Care Transformation Task Force. Among other things, this legislation provides nearly $50 million over 2 years for statewide community-based prevention efforts in Minnesota. Colleagues close to the work report that engagement with the system dynamics model helped support this decision.
The Diabetes System Dynamics Team
- Andrew (Drew) Jones, Sustainability Institute
- Joyce Essien, Emory University and CDC
- Jack Homer, Homer Consulting
- Doc Klein, Uncharted Territories
Resources
- View the Diabetes Population Flows Map.
- "Where is the Leverage?" a graph of 3 scenarios from the model.
- A paper on the modeling project has now been published in the American Journal of Public Health. Reference:
Understanding Diabetes Population Dynamics Through Simulation Modeling and Experimentation, Andrew P. Jones, MS, Jack B. Homer, PhD, Dara L. Murphy, MPH, Joyce D. K. Essien, MD, MBA, Bobby Milstein, MPH and Donald A. Seville, MS
March 2006, Vol 96, No. 3 | American Journal of Public Health 488-494
© 2006 American Public Health Association -- DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2005.063529
For a copy of the paper, follow the link above or email Drew Jones. - Pictures and poetry from a diabetes strategy session in Vermont, (March 2005) (3.8MB pdf) by Doc Klein.
- The CDC's Diabetes Systems Modeling Project: Developing a new tool for chronic disease prevention and control (2004) (240KB pdf). Overview of model findings and background on the model-building process.
- Diabetes Systems Model Reference Guide, Jack Homer (2006) (547KB pdf). Overview of model structure behavior and assumptions.
- Photos and descriptions from a diabetes workshop in California, (January 2007) (4.38MB pdf)
Contact
- Drew Jones (model and project direction)