Skip to content
Home page - The Prevention Centre

Primary menu

  • About us
    • Our vision and mission
    • Our approach
    • Our partners
    • Our structure and governance
  • About prevention
    • What is prevention?
    • What are the benefits of prevention for health and wellbeing?
    • What is the burden of chronic disease?
    • What are the economic benefits of prevention?
    • What are the co-benefits of prevention?
  • Our people
  • Our work
    • Research projects
    • Knowledge syntheses
    • A systems thinking approach
    • Dynamic simulation modelling
    • Collaboration for Enhanced Research Impact (CERI)
  • Our impact
    • Research impact
  • Resource hub
  • Events
  • News
  • Engage with us
    • The Chronicle newsletter
    • Emerging Leaders Network
    • Communities of practice
    • Work or study with us
    • Contact us
Search
What are you looking for?

You can search across all our content by topic, methodology and content type.

    Home > Resource hub > Addressing complexity in prevention research: The dynamic duality of systemic and systematic approaches

Addressing complexity in prevention research: The dynamic duality of systemic and systematic approaches

To address complexity in chronic disease prevention, there is a need for systems thinking approaches. How can systemic and systematic paradigms be applied to research projects?

Dr Melanie Pescud delivered this presentation at the Public Health Association of Australia’s (PHAA’s) annual prevention conference in Brisbane, 11-13 May 2022.

We applied a comparative case study design to explore how prevention researchers addressed complexity in their study of the prevention of chronic disease. We adapted the work of Ison and Straw (2020) on ‘systemic’ and ‘systematic’ paradigms to examine some of the similarities, differences, and patterns in the application of systemic and systematic approaches across six projects related to food and nutrition policy, obesity prevention, liveability, and health services research.

The difference between systemic and systematic approaches

Systemic referred to approaches that explored the bigger picture; with a focus on systems comprised of interconnected parts, while systematic referred to a focus on details and examining the parts within a system. Our findings show that to address complex problems, prevention research strikes a balance between systemic and systematic paradigms. We present examples of this duality, and describe a number of different and dynamic ways in which these complementary aspects of prevention research were embodied and operationalised.

Findings

Our findings suggest that prevention research judged primarily on explicit use of systems science theory and methods may be judged as systemically deficient, yet the systemic paradigm can also be expressed through other important dimensions. For example, systemic approaches may be operationalised through research partner relationships, approaches to capacity building, and knowledge mobilisation. We also present an empirically derived heuristic to inform and support explicit and fit for purpose choices about the nature and balance of systemic and systematic approaches in prevention research.

Details

DATE 12 May 2022

TYPE Videos

Prevention experts

  • Dr Melanie Pescud Dr Melanie Pescud has finished working with the Prevention Centre.

    University of Western Australia
    Headshot of Melanie Pescud
  • Professor Lucie Rychetnik

    The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre
    Headshot of Lucie Rychetnik

Prevention methodologies

  • Systems and complexity ,

Related projects

  • Systems approaches in action

    Illustration of a person at a computer dealing with many different complex types of data
SHARE
TweetLinkedInFacebookEmail

More resources

  • Community of practice: Scaling the voice of older adults

    Resource category: Videos Videos
    Date 15 Mar 2023
  • What makes a neighbourhood healthy, active and happy to live in?

    Resource category: Videos Videos
    Date 23 Jan 2023
  • Advanced modelling shows a 20% sugar-sweetened beverage tax is a best buy for reducing child obesity in Australia

    Resource category: Policy Briefs Policy Briefs
    Date 12 Dec 2022

Acknowledgement of Country

The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.

Newsletter sign-up

Newsletter

Follow the Prevention Centre

Follow us

  • TwitterTwitter
  • LinkedinLinkedin
  • YoutubeYoutube
  • PodcastPodcast

Funding Partners

The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre is funded by the NHMRC, Australian Government Department of Health, ACT Health, Cancer Council Australia, NSW Ministry of Health, Wellbeing SA, Tasmanian Department of Health, and VicHealth. The Australian Government also contributed through the Medical Research Future Fund. Queensland Health became a financial contributor in 2022. The Prevention Centre is administered by the Sax Institute.

©2023 The Sax Institute.

Footer Navigation

  • Contact us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • Copyright
  • Terms of Use
  • Sitemap

BROWSER NOT SUPPORTED

It seems you’re using a browser that we no longer support, so this site might not function as expected.

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge to visit this website.

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!