Wellesley Institute

Wellesley Institute works in research and policy to improve health and health equity in the GTA through action on the social determinants of health.

Home Blog Health systems and Health equity Modelling the social determinants of health and simulating short-term and long-term intervention impacts for the city of Toronto, Canada

Aziza Mahamoud

Modelling the social determinants of health and simulating short-term and long-term intervention impacts for the city of Toronto, Canada

There is a substantial body of evidence highlighting the importance of the social determinants of health in shaping the health of urban populations in Canada. The low socio-economic status of marginalized, disadvantaged, and precarious populations in urban settings has been linked to adverse health outcomes including chronic and infectious disease, negative health behaviours, barriers to accessing health care services, and overall mortality. Given the dynamic complexities and inter-relationships surrounding the underlying drivers of population health outcomes and inequities, it is difficult to assess program and policy intervention tradeoffs, particularly when such interventions are studied with static models. To address this challenge, we have adopted a systems science approach and developed a simulation model for the City of Toronto, Canada, utilizing system dynamics modelling methodology.
For more information about the model, please refer to our recent peer-reviewed paper about the model in the Journal of Social Science & Medicine. The paper is currently available online and will soon be published in the journal’s special issue on complexity and health.

Purchase the article or view the abstract online.

Anyone can explore the model and design and test simulation scenarios, using our interactive web interface. This allows you to test the various policies in the model and examine system-wide effects of interventions related to the social determinants of health.

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Aziza Mahamoud

Aziza Mahamoud

Aziza is a former Research Associate at the Wellesley Institute (WI), leading the urban health systems modeling projects. Prior to joining WI, she was a Research Associate at the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, where she worked with Dr. Osgood and his team in the Computer Science department. Her research there was primarily focused on building population-level dynamic, computational models of tuberculosis transmission and examining interventions. Before her modeling work, Aziza worked with the Saskatoon Health Region's communicable disease division, conducting surveillance studies on antibiotic resistant infections and developing disease prevention and control policies. Aziza holds a Masters in Public Health degree from University of Saskatchewan’s School of Public Health, where she focused on epidemiology and system dynamics, and a B.Sc. in the life sciences from the University of Waterloo. Her research interests include population and public health, syndemics, health disparities, and the application of system dynamics modeling tools to design and evaluate effective population health policies.

Acknowledgement of Traditional Land

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the Wellesley Institute operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

Revised by the Ceremonial Committee at the University of Toronto Office of Indigenous Initiatives in April 2021.