JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Brown Buttabean Motivation (BBM) is an organization providing support for Pacific people and Indigenous Māori to manage their weight, mainly through community-based exercise sessions and social support. It was started by Dave Letele, a man of Samoan and Māori descent, following his personal weight loss journey from a peak weight of 210 kg to less than half that amount. Letele is a charismatic leader with a high media profile, successful in soliciting donations from corporations in money and kind. Over time, BBM’s activities have evolved to include healthy eating, food parcel provision and other components of healthy living. A co-design team of university researchers and BBM staff are evaluating various components of the program and organization.

Objective:

To build culturally-centered, system dynamics logic models to serve as the agreed theories of change for BBM, and provide a basis for its ongoing effectiveness, sustainability, and continuous quality improvements.

Methods:

A systems science approach will clarify the purpose of BBM and identify the systemic processes needed to effectively and sustainably achieve this. Cognitive mapping interviews of key stakeholders will produce maps of their conceptions of BBM’s goals and related cause and effect processes. The themes arising from the analysis of these maps will provide the initial indicators of change to inform the questions for twoa series of group model-building workshops. In these workshops, two groups (BBM staff and BBM members) will build qualitative systems models (casual loop diagrams), identifying feedback loops of the structures and processes of the BBM system which will enhance the program’s effectiveness, sustainability and quality improvement. The Pacific and Māori team members will ensure that workshop content, processes and outputs will be grounded in the cultural approaches appropriate for the BBM community, with several Pacific and Māori frameworks informing the methods. Theseis includes the Samoan fa’afaletui research framework, which requires different perspectives to be woven together to create new knowledge, and Kaupapa Māori-aligned research approaches, which create a culturally safe space to conduct research by, with, and for Māori. The Pacific Fonofale and Māori Te Whare Tapa Whā holistic frameworks for interpreting people's dimensions of health and wellbeing, will also inform this study.

Results:

Systems logic models will inform BBM’s future developments as a sustainable organization and support its growth and development beyond its high dependence on Letele’s charismatic leadership.

Conclusions:

This study will adopt a novel and innovative approach to co-designing culturally-centered, system dynamics logic models for BBM, by using systems science methods embedded within Pacific and Māori world views, weaving together a number of frameworks and methodologies. These will form the theories of change to enhance BBM’s effectiveness, sustainability and continuous improvement. Clinical Trial: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry ACTRN 12621-00093-1875 Submitted 10-05-2021, completed 1507-2021.