Application: Veterans Administration Healthcare

Formulating policy for public health action can be characterized as designing solutions within a complex adaptive system-of-systems (CASoS). Public health systems are complex due to the large number of interdependencies and non-linear interactions among autonomous agents, such as individuals, health care organizations, and governmental agencies. They are adaptive in that the behaviors of individuals, organizations, and diseases are highly responsive to the behaviors of other such agents, as well as to hazards and natural disasters. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is collaborating with CASoS Engineers to capture the health care system as a complex adaptive system-of-systems,with the intent of identifying and addressing health-threat scenarios of consequence.

Background

Publications

• Conference Papers

  • 8th International Conference on Complex Systems, June 2011, Quincy, MA (ICCS 2011 Proceedings available for download)

    • Public Health Care as a Complex Adaptive System of Systems

    • Extending Opinion Dynamics to Model Public Health Problems and Analyze Public Policy Interventions

• Presentations

• 8th International Conference on Complex Systems, June 2011, Quincy, MA (ICCS 2011 Proceedings available for download)

  • Public Health Care as a Complex Adaptive System of Systems

  • Extending Opinion Dynamics to Model Public Health Problems and Analyze Public Policy Interventions

• 2010 Conference on Modeling for Public Health Action: From Epidemiology to Operations, Centers for Disease Control & Preparedness, December 2010, Atlanta, GA

  • The Effect of Healthcare Environments on a Pandemic Influenza Outbreak

  • Loki-Infect 3: A Portable Networked Agent Model for Designing Community-Level Containment Strategies

  • A Complex Adaptive Systems Modeling Framework for Public Health Action Exemplified by the Veterans Affairs Modeling Object Oriented Simulation Environment

• 2010 VHA Comprehensive Emergency Management Program Evaluation and Research Conference, May 2010, Baltimore, MD

  • Defining & Evaluating Threats and Designing Mitigation Strategies for VA Healthcare