Advancing Public Health with Systems Science & Simulation Modeling

Calls for the use of systems modeling and simulation methods to advance population health and address health disparities have been made with growing urgency, yet they remain largely underutilized. Barriers to the increased uptake of these methods (e.g., agent-based modeling, system dynamics modeling, and discrete event simulation) by population health researchers are non-trivial, though not insurmountable. This event aims to 1) highlight the critical importance of systems thinking in advancing discovery, 2) confront the challenges associated with training and development, as well as interdisciplinary collaborations, and 3) to address the barriers to uptake of these methods.