What to know
When thinking about complex issues, is your boundary of inquiry—what is included and excluded—broad enough? Often issues are defined too narrowly, which can result in unintended consequences. By expanding the boundary of inquiry, you increase the likelihood of considering a larger set of relevant relationships that affect how the system works and what is causing the behavior.
Example from the field
Let's revisit the Type 2 diabetes example. When thinking about policy interventions, you may want to consider those that slow down the rate at which people develop Type 2 diabetes or interventions that help people return to health.
If you expand the boundaries of your system to include stocks of pre-diabetics and even non-diabetics, you increase the opportunity to identify ways to potentially prevent Type 2 diabetes. You can also better anticipate unintended consequences while gaining a much richer set of policy levers to consider.
Use expanding boundaries with the CDC Policy Process
The Strategy and Policy Development phase in the CDC Policy Process focuses on identifying how the policy will operate and what will be needed for Policy Enactment and Implementation. During the Strategy and Policy Development phase it can be important to make sure that your level of analysis is wide enough to include all the important areas of policy development.
The CDC policy process graphic highlights Strategy and Policy Development in purple, Policy Enactment in blue, and Policy Implementation in orange. During these stages, it is important to ensure the boundary of inquiry is wide enough while not being too broad.