Abstract for: More Than Analysis Problems: A Call to Use Group Model Building to Address Coordination Problems in Public Health

There is increasing use of Group Model Building (GMB) and Community Based System Dynamics (CBSD) in public health research. This makes sense given the proliferation of complex problems in public health settings, especially within implementation where multi-component and multi-level, evidence-based interventions are common, necessitating the coordination and collaboration of multiple stakeholders who hold very different views, goals, and professional incentives. There is a rich tradition of GMB and CBSD methods being used to develop shared insight and shared mental models among workshop participants who are seen as potential agents of systems change. However, the results of our narrative review of GMB public health papers indicate that most public health applications of GMB seem to position participants as informants of system structure, rather than agents of change, and to scope the complex problems they are addressing as what Hovmand (2015) might call "analysis problems." We argue that this represents a missed opportunity to use GMB to address the abundant "coordination problems" present in the implementation of public health interventions. To illustrate, we provide a case study of how GMB was used to address a "coordination problem" in the implementation of a community gardening initiative in rural Missouri.