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BOX 1-2 
What Is Meant by Systems Thinking?
A systems approach
•
explicitly designs strategies to focus on interactions and inter-
connections (integration) between and among different sectors 
in the community and between individuals and their community 
environment;
•
accounts for the context and characteristics of a community in plan-
ning intervention strategies in order to see the whole picture so that 
intended and unintended consequences of strategies can be recog-
nized and the strategies altered if required;
•
utilizes a multidisciplinary approach, including community experts, to 
determine the interactions among systems and sectors necessary to 
develop feasible interventions that will be sustainable (persistence 
of changes made and ongoing adoption of new ones) and scalable 
(capable of being brought to scale to impact many settings) and 
have reach across cultural and language population subgroups.

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