Systems simulation model for assessing the sustainability and synergistic impacts of sugar-sweetened beverages tax and revenue recycling on childhood obesity prevention

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed prominent calls to tax sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) to prevent obesity in the United States. Despite efforts to evaluate this proposed policy, limited data and no framework exist for evaluating long-term, dynamic, cumulative health impacts of taxing SSBs while recycling revenue to support related interventions. Systems simulation models offer an important new lens for evaluating policy interventions, but such models have traditionally under-conceptualized key implementation science concerns, such as sustainability, revenue recycling, and bringing interventions to scale. Using a system dynamics model representing implementation dynamics, this study contributes a simulation model to inform policymakers’ understanding of how allocating revenue collected by SSB taxation across sustainable implementation strategies might maximize benefits of such taxation for childhood obesity prevention.

Keywords:

• system dynamics model
• sugar-sweetened beverage taxing
• revenue recycling
• obesity prevention
• implementation science

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1057/jors.2015.99) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Supplementary information accompanies this article on the Journal of the Operational Research Society website (www.palgrave-journals.com/jors)

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1057/jors.2015.99) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Supplementary information accompanies this article on the Journal of the Operational Research Society website (www.palgrave-journals.com/jors)

Acknowledgements

The study was supported by research grants from the Chinese National Social Science Foundation (12CGL103), the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) (research grants 1R01HD064685-01A1 and U54HD070725 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development [NICHD]). The U54 project is co-funded by the NICHD and the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR).