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Translating research into prevention of high-risk behaviors in the presence of complex systems: definitions and systems frameworks

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Translational Behavioral Medicine

Abstract

To impact population health, it is critical to collaborate across disciplinary and practice-based silos and integrate resources, experiences, and knowledge to exert positive change. Complex systems shape both the prevention outcomes researchers, practitioners, and policymakers seek to impact and how research is translated and can either impede or support movement from basic scientific discovery to impactful and scaled-up prevention practice. Systems science methods can be used to facilitate designing translation support that is grounded in a richer understanding of the many interacting forces affecting prevention outcomes across contexts. In this paper, we illustrate how one systems science method, system dynamics, could be used to advance research, practice, and policy initiatives in each stage of translation from discovery to translation of innovation into global communities (T0-T5), with tobacco prevention as an example. System dynamics can be applied to each translational stage to integrate disciplinary knowledge and document testable hypotheses to inform translation research and practice.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Policy and Management, 1105E McGavran-Greenberg, CB# 7411, Department of Health Policy and Management, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 135 Dauer Dr, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-7411, USA

    Kriste Hassmiller Lich Ph.D & Leah Frerichs Ph.D

  2. The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA

    Diana Fishbein Ph.D

  3. RTI, International, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

    Georgiy Bobashev Ph.D

  4. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Mary Ann Pentz Ph.D

Authors
  1. Kriste Hassmiller Lich Ph.D
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  2. Leah Frerichs Ph.D
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  3. Diana Fishbein Ph.D
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  4. Georgiy Bobashev Ph.D
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  5. Mary Ann Pentz Ph.D
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kriste Hassmiller Lich Ph.D.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

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Implications

Researchers: System dynamics tools offer an approach to integrating science, data, and stakeholders’ knowledge into explicit and testable mechanistic hypotheses about prevention outcomes that can strengthen research over time and across translational stages.

Practitioners: System dynamics diagrams offer a mechanism for describing practitioners’ understanding of the most important cross-system factors shaping behavioral outcomes, which informs action planning and helps practitioners communicate their intuition about how to improve systems.

Policymakers: System dynamics diagramming creates explicit theories of change that will inform decision-making in the context of dynamically complex systems problems and increase return on investment.

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Hassmiller Lich, K., Frerichs, L., Fishbein, D. et al. Translating research into prevention of high-risk behaviors in the presence of complex systems: definitions and systems frameworks. Behav. Med. Pract. Policy Res. 6, 17–31 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-016-0390-z

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