How Can a Community Pursue Equitable Health and Well-Being after a Severe Shock? Ideas from an Exploratory Simulation Model

Abstract

Local communities sometimes face severe shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or economic recession, which inflict widespread harm, intensify injustice and test the ties that bind people together. A recent “Springboard” theory proposes a way to spring forward toward an equitable, thriving future by altering priorities among four structural drivers of population well-being: the extent of vital conditions, equity, urgent services capacity, and belonging and civic muscle. To explore the strategic implications of the Springboard theory, we developed the Thriving Together Model, a system dynamics simulation model that lets users play out alternative investment priorities and track changes over a decade as they try to maximize the number of people thriving and minimize suffering. The prototype model is exploratory, subject to further refinement and empirical support, but it has already sparked creative conversations among hundreds of changemakers who have interacted with it through an interactive theater. This paper presents the model’s structure, illustrative results, and tentative insights. The Thriving Together Model extends Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning work on shared stewardship by offering a general explanation about how stewards of a divided community can heal through a traumatic shock and spring forward toward a future with greater well-being and justice.