I’ve had to— as they say in scoring large scale writing assessments— “recalibrate.” I’ve recalibrated my attitude toward IRBs and their need when it comes to evaluating interventions designed to better communities. I attended a session today at Light Hall on “IRB issues in community-engaged research” and sponsored by the Vanderbilt IRB. I had no [...]
“Joinery” refers both to the craft of a joiner, someone who makes things by joining together pieces of wood, and to the premises from which the craft is practiced.
Coalitions
Another vote against planning from the 37 Signals guys: Plans “aren’t worth the stress”
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hannson in their new Rework published by Crown Business advise going against most of what we’ve come to accept as sacred business truths. Having worked with federal funded programs from education to drug and alcohol prevention, I know their proclivity toward forcing recipients to use business ways. So I am [...]
Attractors in community healthcare
As you know I’ve been attracted to attractors recently. I’ve found an example of attractors in patterning improvements in community settings. Russell Gonnering has a post over on the Cognitive Edge site on amplifying positive “attractors” to benefit community healthcare. He cites work by Marian Zeitlin and Jerry and Monique Sternin.
A Tufts University nutritionist, Dr. [...]
Intuition plays a major role in making decisions in a parallel process
We are getting closer to finding out how our mind (in the broadest sense) operates in making decisions. And intuition plays a major role. For sometime now we have had Epstein’s dual processing model of rational and experiential cognitive systems and now we have a summary of the three decades or more of research by [...]
Planning not always effective for changing social complex systems
Is governmental agencies insistence on upfront planning undermining efforts to really improve education and preventing substance abuse in our communities? I came across a passage today in a 2005 publication of the Institute for Defense Analyses, Learning to adapt to asymmetric threats. A slew of retired Army, Navy and Air Force officers are credited with [...]
Data and measurement needs of a coalition
“If a judge or commission member knows there are people in the community caring and that show up to the meetings, then they will very likely make totally different decisions.”
Mrs. Camilla Bibbs-Lee was telling us a story to describe the multiple strategies of the Hamilton anti-drug coalition. We were sitting in her office, which doubles [...]