Training

Date: January  12th, 2021

Presenter:
Sylvia Pirani, MPH, MS
Public Health Practice Consultant

Helen de Pinho, MBBCh, FCCH, MBA
Assistant Professor
Population and Family Health
Columbia University Medical Center

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In this month’s Log-in2Learn, Helen de Pinho, MBBCh, FCCH, MBA, and Sylvia Pirani, MPH, MS, walk us through the process of policy making and the role of systems thinking in combating complex challenges. Sylvia starts by highlighting the steps required to craft good policy and emphasizes the importance of incorporating community members and stakeholders in the process. She then identifies some of the common obstacles seen during this process and shares instances of the same. Helen goes on to unpack the concept of systems thinking, explaining how it can be used and why it is such an essential tool for policy makers and the public health workforce. She demonstrates the ways in which systems thinking can be used to address complex situations and tricky relationships in the policy making process through a series of examples. Finally, they both identify the next steps in policy making and share useful resources for policy identification and systems thinking during challenging times.

Participants will be able to:

1. Define policy making in public health and how it can be used to achieve public health goals
2. Identify how systems thinking can strengthen public health policy development
3. Discuss how some of the essential steps in policy making and systems thinking can help address “wicked” public health challenges