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L6: systems thinking in public health nutrition

6 important questions on L6: systems thinking in public health nutrition

What are upstream factors? Give 2 examples:

Factors that are focussed on ensuring conditions that prevent people to fall in the river int he first place. Now adays, we focus on people that have already risk factors for diseases, while we should go to the root of the problem and see what conditions are causing people to getting the risk factors in the first place.

2 examples are
- living and working conditions
- economic, cultural and environmental factors

What are the 4 characteristics of a complex problem? Explain the 4 characteristics

- multifactorial: there are multiple factors that contribute to the problem and they range from individual behaviors to more upstream determinants
- non-linear relationship between cause and effect: small changes can lead to unexpectedly large or unpredictable effects. For example weight gain.
- emergence: the problem is more than a sum of its parts, accumulating issues. Its complex and that can give rise to new properties
- adaptive: the problem can adapt to changing circumstances, it can learn and evolve to survive and thrive

Give 4 categories of factors that contribute to for example the obesity problem

- individual factors (not eating healthy, knowledge about healthy)
- social factors (friends, family, social norms)
- living and working conditions (food environment, education, housing)
- economic, cultural and environmental factors (policies towards nutrition, cultural context towards nutrition)

Explain why upstream factors appear to decrease socioeconomic inequalities in diet?

Because these are the factors that lay at the root of the problem. By targeting these underlying factors, upstream interventions can create more supportive environment that promote better health outcomes for all individuals, regardless of socioeconomic position

How do dynamic factors operate?

They operate in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behaviour over time. It states that elements are not fixed, but and exibit change

What is causal loop diagram (CLD)?

A visual representation that illustrates the dynamic relationship and feedbackloop of a complex system. Its a tool in systems thinking to map out cause- and effect relaitonship.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Public health nutrition

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