What Can Policy-Makers Get Out of Systems Thinking? Policy Partners’ Experiences of a Systems-Focused Research Collaboration in Preventive Health

Background There is increasing interest in using systems thinking to tackle ‘wicked’ policy problems in preventive health, but this can be challenging for policymakers because the literature is amorphous and often highly theoretical. Little is known about how best to support health policymakers to gain skills in understanding and applying systems thinking for policy action.   Methods Indepth interviews were conducted with 18 policymakers who are participating in an Australian research collaboration that uses a systems approach. Our aim was to explore factors that support policymakers to use systems approaches, and to identify any impacts of systems thinking on policy thinking or action, including the pathways through which these impacts occurred.Results All 18 policymakers agreed that systems thinking has merit but some questioned its practical policy utility. A small minority were confused about what systems thinking is or which approaches were being used in the collaboration. The majority were engaged with systems thinking and this group identified concrete impacts on their work. They reported using systems-focused research, ideas, tools and resources in policy work that were contributing to the development of practical methodologies for policy design, scaling up, implementation and evaluation; and to new prevention narratives. Importantly, systems thinking was helping some policymakers to reconceptualise health problems and contexts, goals, potential policy solutions and methods. In short, they were changing how they think about preventive health.Conclusion These results show that researchers and policymakers can put systems thinking into action as part of a research collaboration, and that this can result in discernible impacts on policy processes. In this case, actionoriented collaboration and capacity development over a 5year period facilitated mutual learning and practical application. This indicates that policymakers can get substantial applied value from systems thinking when they are involved in extended coproduction processes that target policy impact and are supported by responsive capacity strategies.