Abstract for: Collaboration with stakeholders in transdisciplinary research: The provision of evidence in climate and health equity research

Transdisciplinary research aims to create impact in real-world decision-making and implementation. Yet, a recurring challenge remains: how to move from the provision of evidence to actually influencing decisions and practice, and how to engage stakeholders in ways that enable meaningful translation of insights. This work draws on lessons from the PAICE project, in which the system dynamics team collaborated with two key stakeholders to co-develop a causal loop diagram and a system dynamics simulation model. We describe how we engaged with these stakeholders and how we adapted both our process and our outputs to meet their needs in terms of format, intensity and practicality. Our work suggests that collaboration can be usefully conceptualised in two ways: the format of engagement and the format of outputs. In both areas, we found that adjustments to traditional system dynamics practice, including using a highly concise group model-building process and delivering insight in priorities and focused ‘causal chunks’ rather than through making aware of underlying structural complexity. This work contributes to improving the design of successful collaboration with stakeholders and raises an important question: how much knowledge of system structure is sufficient for good decision-making, in stable contexts and in dynamic, rapidly changing environments.