Modeling Social Determinants of Health. Edition No. 1. Wiley Series in Modeling and Simulation

This book provides a critical approach to building and simulating computer models of social determinants of health and draws primarily on system dynamics due to the availability of rich examples of system dynamics models that have been developed around the world using participatory models.  Also, the diverse set of case studies feature examples from around the world in both less developed and more developed countries, discuss rural and urban health issues, and are inclusive of a broad range of participants (from villagers in India t residents in St, Louis, MO to policy makers engaged in statewide mental health reform).  Using a system dynamics approach to represent and explore impacts of complex interrelationships, this book discusses the social construction of categories of thought that shape how a system is defined and its various relationships.  Participatory modeling offers a cricial point of leverage in increasingly complex stakeholder sets that affect and are affected by governmental and community policies and services.  As such, this book illuminates how the method of participatory modeling reveals the socially constructed nature of social determinants and its potential for revealing alternative ways of framing and perserving problems.  Chapter coverage includes: social determinants of health; system dynamics and participatory model building; social determinants as community characteristics; social determinants as feedback structures; social determinants as category structures; social determinants as model boundaries; social determinants as system behavior; and limitations and extensions to other system approaches such as agent based modeling, social network analysis, geographic information systems, and hybrid methods.