Abstract for: Building peer support and practice insights in community-based modeling practice

Applications of system dynamics modeling in community settings have proliferated over the past two decades. While some of this increasing scope of practice in and with communities has been documented in formal research publications, the more prosaic or incremental experiments, successes, and failures do not often show up in academic journals or conference presentations. Though there are many formal and informal peer support networks in the system dynamics community, to our knowledge there does not exist a multi-institution peer support network focused on strengthening connection and sharing of methodological innovations and applications of community-engaged or community-driven system dynamics modeling work. This presentation describes an ongoing pilot to strengthen a community of practice around community-based system dynamics modeling approaches through the use of a structured consultancy protocol. We report on the structure of the consultancy and reflect on the kinds of challenges and practice insights shared by the emerging community of practice and our own approaches to designing community-based modeling work.