Community-engaged systems science offers powerful tools for tackling complex public health problems — particularly when co-produced with the communities and stakeholders who are both actors in, and impacted by, the system. This talk illustrates this approach through two examples. First, a partnership with Los Angeles County government to build smart tools and analytics for community food systems, using participatory group model building and systems modeling to address food insecurity and guide local food policy. Second is the development of systems and agent-based models within a large precision nutrition consortium, to map ecological factors across individual, household, community, and structural levels shaping equitable uptake of personalized nutrition, and identify leverage points for population-level interventions.

AgriCULTURE: Simulation models of Social and Institutional Processes in Agri-Food and Land-Use Systems\r\nAgri-food and land-use systems are central to some of the most pressing global challenges of our time. These systems provide essential goods for our everyday lives, yet they also act as key drivers of climate change and biodiversity loss. Advancing sustainability transitions in these systems requires a deeper understanding of the social, cultural, economic, and institutional processes as well as socio-ecological interactions that shape food production and consumption choices.\r\n\r\nModelling Diet Change: Sustainable Food System Transformation\r\nFood systems are one of the high potential towards a more sustainable future. More and more scholars are interested in dietary change (e.g. how do eat less meat or increase fibre and plants to our diets), and modellers haven’t been sitting still either.