The importance of systems thinking to address obesity

Obesity is clearly a complex problem for both the individual and for society. Complex or 'wicked' problems have common characteristics such as heterogeneity, nonlinearity, interdependence, and self-organization. As such they require solutions appropriate for complex problems, rather than a reductionist search for the causes. 'Systems thinking' provides new ways to consider how to collectively address complex societal problems like obesity, where biology interacts with social, cultural and built environmental factors in infinite permutations and combinations. The systems that give rise to the obesity epidemic function at multiple levels, and there are important interactions between these levels. At any given level, individual actors and organizations matter and system function is optimized when individual and organizational capacity to respond is well matched to the complexity of individual tasks. Providing system supports to help networks of individuals become 'communities of practice' and 'systems of influence' may also help to accelerate the pace of effective action against obesity. Research efforts need to move away from the relentless search for the specific isolated causes of obesity and focus on solutions that have been shown to work in addressing other 'wicked' problems.