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

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.