Tuesday 27th January 2026 11:00 – 13:00 GMT via Zoom
To register for the seminar, please use this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_uYmgZgzJSRuNWIOg2JDsow
Introduction
The modern world is complex and modern healthcare is no exception. Patients increasingly present with multi-morbidities and long-term conditions, while demographic shifts and diverse expectations make standardised approaches inadequate. 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—systems thinking enables policies that reflect real-world complexity, embedding agility and delivering more equitable care. By anticipating these system-wide impacts, systems thinking avoids siloed interventions and enables sustainable workforce improvements.
We’ll explore how systems thinking can help manage complexity, drive transformation, and support multidisciplinary models of care; addressing key questions such as:
- 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, Human Resources for Health Policy Advisor, WHO Europe
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, including leadership of the 2025 HRH modelling symposium and contributions to EU initiatives such as the HEROES Joint Action (health workforce to meet health challenges).
Meet Our Seminar Panel
Professor Brian Castellani , Director of the Research Methods Centre & Co-Director of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University
Brian Castellani is Director of the Research Methods Centre and Co-Director of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University (UK), Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University (South Africa), Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Northeastern Ohio Medical University (US), and a Fellow of the UK National Academy of Social Sciences. His work focuses on improving public policy and health system performance through complexity-informed approaches, with extensive collaboration with the WHO, the NHS, and international partners on population health, environmental risk, and healthcare workforce resilience. He is co-author of The Atlas of Social Complexity, which underpins his work on best practices for evidence-informed decision-making in complex health and social systems.
More panellists will be announced in the coming weeks!