Table 1.

Objectives of community-based system dynamics workshops.

Explicit objectives communicated to participants prior to the workshops
E1: Bring diverse stakeholders into an initiative to promote healthy, equitable, and sustainable cities in Latin America
E2: Gain experience in application of systems approaches in urban health problems and use of causal loop diagrams to identify and explore policy options
E3: Participants will provide input that will help identify and prioritize research questions and practice implications to be pursued by the SALURBAL project using systems modeling in the future
Implicit objectives communicated to participants after the workshops
I1: Put health and health equity on the agenda of policymakers who may not think their work influences health.
I2: Learn about and expand mental models (i.e., a cognitive representation of a real dynamic system) of stakeholders (academia, policymakers, banks, civil society) around transportation, food systems, and health
I3: Identify policy priorities for improving health through transportation and food system intervention and learn what is of value to stakeholders
I4: Identify common structures/drivers and variations across cities/contexts, and determine whether outputs of these workshops can inform the development of a simulation model
I5: Assess and test the waters for a potential simulation model/systems approach and dissemination beyond academia