The first in this year's Working for Health 2030 webinar series co-hosted by WHO and NHS England, this seminar examines the complexity of modern health service delivery. Patients increasingly present with multi-morbidities and long-term conditions, while demographic shifts and diverse expectations make standardised approaches inadequate. This means effective delivery of care depends on successful collaboration across a large, dynamic and ever-evolving network of professions, services and organisations.
Systems thinking offers a powerful framework for designing integrated and resilient health systems. By viewing the workforce within a wider ecosystem — encompassing communities, education, technology, financing, and leadership — it enables policies that reflect real-world complexity. This approach embeds agility, promotes equity, and supports health professionals in anticipating system-wide impacts, avoiding siloed interventions, and driving sustainable improvements in care delivery.
We’ll explore how systems thinking can help manage complexity, drive transformation, and strengthen multidisciplinary models of care, addressing:
- What is systems thinking, and how can it help us better understand and manage complexity in healthcare?
- How can systems thinking inform workforce planning at national and subnational levels?
- What governance and policy levers best support adaptive, collaborative and complex health systems?
- How can systems thinking enhance integrated care models and enable multi-disciplinary working?
- How do leaders shift their thinking from linear to non-linear, from control to influence, from reductionism to holism, from static to dynamic approaches, and from being the expert to becoming a collaboration facilitator?
Meet Our Chair
Crispin Scotter is a Policy Advisor at WHO in Copenhagen, focusing on digital capability and the future health and care workforce. His background includes senior roles in the UK’s Legal Services Commission and the Department of Health, following earlier private-sector experience in supply-chain management. He has supported workforce transformation in more than twenty countries and established the Northern and Western European Human Resources for Health (HRH) hubs. Crispin’s work includes workforce digital enablement, lifelong learning, and modern workforce models, inclu
The seminar will be held on Zoom. Register for the seminar.
Meet our Panel
- Paul Marsden, Senior Workforce Specialist and Working for Health Team Lead, WHO, Seminar Chair
- Jim Campbell, Director, Health Workforce, WHO
- Caline Mattar, Associate Professor of Medicine and Public Health, Washington University
- Åsa Olsson, Subject Specialist on Human Resources for Health, Socialstyrelse
- Adeeb Naasan, Data & Digital Lead, The Scottish Government
- Phoebe Spurr, Deputy Head of International Development and Global Health Development Lead, The Scottish Government
Additional information: NHS England