In June 2014, Future Health Systems (FHS) and the STEPS Centre co-hosted a workshop exploring Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) approaches to health systems strengthening in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
FHS and STEPS are particularly concerned with policies, programs, and individual level interventions promote and protect people's health and wellbeing, particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged populations.
The workshop was designed mainly to build capacity among both consortia on specific methods for working with and understanding CAS.
Read the workshop summary
The Future Health Systems team has produced a summary from the workshop with
- A brief run-down of methods relevant to Complex Adaptive Systems
- Video introductions from Taghreed Adam and Ben Ramalingam (YouTube playlist)
- Full video of 7 presentations from the workshop (YouTube playlist)
- 7 blogposts on complexity approaches & their use in health systems research
Blog posts
Two articles by STEPS members in this series have also been re-posted on the STEPS blog:
- 'Innovation histories': capturing legacy & learning from long-term programmes by Annie Wilkinson
- New methods needed: How can complexity science help us to understand pluralistic health systems? by Gerry Bloom
Further reading
The Future Health Systems website has a theme on Complex Adaptive Systems, drawing together all FHS work in this area.
For more projects and publications in this area, see our Health & Disease Domain page.
The book Transforming Health Markets in Asia and Africa: Improving quality and access for the poor documents the innovative approaches designed to address the problems associated with unregulated health markets, and proposes a framework for understanding health market systems and outcomes.
