Page - 15 - in options, Volume summer 2017

www.iiasa.ac.at summer 2017 ◼ options 15 H ealth is likely to rate well above wealth when people are asked what’s important in life. And in striving for “good health” the world’s largest science community has been created. Health journals and health professionals regularly make headlines, and with a four billion dollar annual budget, the World Health Organization is a giant among international institutions. IIASA scientists engage with health issues at many levels, including through studies of air pollution, climate change, ecology, evolution, land use, and water. The relevance to human health of these core research areas is often direct and sometimes indirect; but as the scientists make clear, understanding the linkages of planetary systems to health has never been more important, and IIASA is well-positioned to take a leading role on the topic. Know your networks “Any complex system is composed of elements and their interactions, and the health care system is no exception,” says IIASA researcher Stefan Thurner. In any health care system “it’s the patients, it’s the pharmaceutical industry, it’s the psychotherapists—you name it.” His point is that they are all interacting with each other but not always achieving the best possible outcome. Thurner and colleagues set out to untangle the genetic and environmental risk factors for individual diseases in cases where patients who have one disease are likely to have another related disease—known as comorbidity networks. Injecting IIASA science into health research