Epistasis Blog

From the Artificial Intelligence Innovation Lab at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (www.epistasis.org)

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Complex Adaptive Systems and Public Health

We need more papers like this exploring human health as a complex system.

Resnicow K, Page SE. Embracing chaos and complexity: a quantum change for public health. Am J Public Health. 2008 Aug;98(8):1382-9. [PubMed]

Public health research and practice have been guided by a cognitive, rational paradigm where inputs produce linear, predictable changes in outputs. However, the conceptual and statistical assumptions underlying this paradigm may be flawed. In particular, this perspective does not adequately account for nonlinear and quantum influences on human behavior. We propose that health behavior change is better understood through the lens of chaos theory and complex adaptive systems. Key relevant principles include that behavior change (1) is often a quantum event; (2) can resemble a chaotic process that is sensitive to initial conditions, highly variable, and difficult to predict; and (3) occurs within a complex adaptive system with multiple components, where results are often greater than the sum of their parts.

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