Our Mission
The International Society for Systems and Complexity Sciences for Health (ISSCSH) advocates and facilitates improved management of the inherent complexity within the articulation, cultivation, and restoration of health and wellness, particularly through effective and efficient delivery of healthcare services.
We seek to “bridge the gap” between theory and practice in improving health and wellness, by facilitating practical theorists to equip theoretically sound practitioners with the principles, mindsets, and methodologies of systems and complexity thinking, sciences and design.
We investigate, educate, advocate, collaborate, and advise to ensure the development, dissemination, and application of such knowledge, methods, and mental models to strengthen health systems.
We consider health systems to be complex, with the standard properties of complex systems: emergence, non-linearity, limited predictability, fundamental uncertainty, evolutionary dynamics, self-organization, and disproportionate changes brought about by events.
We encourage and engage in multi-level, big-picture thinking that doesn’t lose sight of the impact and importance of “the details,” all while holding to rigorous scientific approaches and methods.
We use the principles of relational coordination to foster community and information-sharing between individuals, academic and professional disciplines, and schools of thought.
Our Values
- The lived experience of well-being (regardless of the presence or absence of identifiable diseases)
- The social benefits of health for people and communities
- Diverse perspectives and inputs from all stakeholders
- Hybrid, transdisciplinary approaches (including the best of systems thinking, design thinking, systems engineering, agile development) that foster stakeholder-consultation, exploration, experimentation, iteration, flexibility and adaptiveness – without losing sight of overarching objectives, requirements, and constraints
- Optimization of overall health system performance over sub-system performance
- Alignment of financial and other incentives with strategic, consensually agreed objectives of systems
- Collaboration and partnership with other individuals and organizations to achieve shared objectives, even when respective visions and missions may differ
Our Structure
The International Society for Systems and Complexity Sciences for Health is an independent, volunteer-run, non-partisan, non-profit organization that is governed by a Board of Directors.
Membership fees and donations underwrite our organizational overhead and the costs of our activities. As we are a volunteer organization, no monies go to salaries or other personal compensation.