Posts Tagged ‘preventable illness’
The wider determinants of health developed by Public Health England show that in fact, things like someone’s education, their job, who their friends are, how they get on with family, and where they live can actually determine how long they will live – even if they’re using the same doctor as someone living down the road but who is likely to live 10 years longer.
In the last two decades, design has been demonstrating a refreshing approach to addressing such complex problems. This is because design provides the opportunity to re-frame problems and solutions.
It explores ways of doing things that haven’t been tried before, to address problems that haven’t been well understood before.
But in this age of complexity and multiple dependencies, problems are constantly and rapidly changing too, and so must solutions. We need to move away from the romantic notion that a solution – whether it’s a service, product or policy – needs to go through a one-off and well-polished design process, beyond which it will continue to be relevant forevermore.
Reality is very different.
So we’re making the case here that as designers, we have a mission to build the capabilities of non-designers who work within the organisations that are transforming our future.
This means they are equipped with the problem-solving mindset to constantly interrogate, improve and innovate as realities quickly evolve, and things that worked yesterday soon become obsolete.
Urgency for prevention and early intervention: There is a sense of urgency to pre-empt problems before they happen in order to save time, resource and often even lives.
The recent NHS Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) demonstrate this urgency. With an ever-increasing population, public services are at breaking point. (It has already broken down)
But since two-thirds of deaths among those under 75 are a result of preventable illness, there is a growing recognition that keeping as many people as possible healthy is the most sustainable investment.
This is where a lot of the STP plans are focusing their energy. Because design offers a lens into the future and a provocation for possible realities, it provides those committed to prevention and early intervention with the ability to understand future problems and to design solutions that can forestall them.
Systemic complexity: We can no longer think of products, services and policies outside of the systems they exist within and interact with.
For example, we worked with the Healthy London Partnership on a deep dive to understand the root causes of childhood obesity and to try out new ways of addressing this chronic challenge.
Our insight revealed that a one-pronged approach will never do.
We need to create positive and synchronised triggers at different points in the system: we need behavioural nudges that change the habits of individuals, we need social movements that influence and inspire whole communities, we need levers that transform physical obesogenic environments, and we also need legislation and regulation such as the Sugary Drink Tax to reduce temptation.
Design invites diverse people across the system to confront problems collaboratively, by creating solutions that leverage the collective power of everyone’s experience, expertise, resource and authority.
Ongoing transformation: In a time of austerity, we just can’t afford to keep slowly chipping away at the problem through little tweaks and tricks in the hope that it will one day disappear. We need to completely and continuously re-imagine how things might work better.
When working with a national charity, we realised that funding for children’s centres was at risk, and that they were struggling to reach diverse families. This meant we needed to completely transform the service, into one where children’s centres can go (literally ‘in a box’) into the homes of those who most need them, for a ninth of the cost and nine times the reach.
A design approach to problem-solving offered staff the opportunity to experiment with transformational ideas at a small and safe scale, fail quickly, learn fast and build confidence in the direction of travel.
What capabilities
Organisations need to develop a number of problem-solving capabilities to future-proof their solutions. In a recent Touchpoint article, my colleagues Jocelyn Bailey and Cat Drew argue that these capabilities are presumably less about skill and more about mindset and culture. Armed with the right mindset, organisations can then develop (and even invent) the unique skills, methods and tools to solve all types of diverse problems. This mindset is characterised by:
Deep human understanding: the approach invites curiosity and determination to explore what lies beneath people’s actions, decisions and perceptions.
Reframing challenges: the insight revealed through deep human understanding can help reframe the challenge to get to the bottom of the hidden root causes, rather than the visible symptoms.
Working with others: a design approach to problem-solving is humble. We admit that we don’t know it all, and we invite others who have experienced the problem in different ways or who are experts in related issues across the system, to come on board and shape the journey.
Learning by doing: the only way to test innovation is to give it a go. Design is a process of solving problems through doing, learning, improving and scaling. Starting small and imperfect can mitigate the risks of failure, and with every iterative cycle and every improved version, more investment and scale can be justified.
image: https://www.uscreates.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/uscreates_prototyping-1024×683.jpg
There are various ways that organisations can build the problem-solving capabilities of their workforce. Last year, I wrote an article with Joyce Yee in the Service Design Impact Report that reviewed different design capability models that the public sector draws on. There is not a one-size-fits-all model, and each presents its own benefits:
Structured training: this varies from one-day workshops to bootcamps. These are best for beginners who would like a taster of the mindset to assess whether it provides potential for the nature of their organisation’s challenges.
Experiential learning: in other words, learning on the job. Often this takes the form of design experts facilitating a series of problem-solving sprints within an organisation, based on a real challenge. Staff are invited to shadow the process, reflect on learning, and experience the benefits first-hand.
Coaching: this model is suited for more experienced organisations who have potentially benefited from structured training and/or experiential learning. They would be keen to lead the problem-solving process themselves, with the support of a design coach for strategic guidance, alignment, and constructive provocation.
Internal disruption: a popular example of this is the lab model, where an organisation invests in an innovation team embedded within, with a role to create and grow a movement and a culture that embraces a design mindset to problem-solving.
In today’s complex and rapidly evolving world, organisations need to start thinking differently about how they are future-proofing what they do and how they do it. They need to invest in people, not solutions. By better equipping their people with a problem-solving mindset, they are creating the enablers for ongoing improvement, innovation and future relevance.
Joanna is Design Director at Uscreates. She is a social designer, author, speaker and lecturer with over 15 years of practical experience in the UK, the Middle East and the United States. She leads on the development and delivery of service design, user centred innovation, design research, business modelling, communication and digital design projects.
Joanna has worked with over 50 public and third sector organisations – including Nesta, The Healthy London Partnership, the Health Foundation and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust – to help them better understand and address their challenges.
She has expertise across a broad range of social challenges including health and wellbeing, social integration, social action, employment, education and social enterprise. Joanna has a Ph.D. in design for social integration in design for social integration and is an RSA fellow. She is an associate lecturer at the University of the Arts London, Kingston University and Ravensbourne University.
Read more at https://www.uscreates.com/capability-training/#rtyugoxJFYpkkelH.9
Adonis Diaries 
Tidbits #96
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 9, 2021
Tidbits #96
If you agree with the notion that input will eventually equal output, then when you do more than you are paid for, eventually you’ll be paid for more than you do. The universal law: we reap what we sow and we get what we give.
The Agro food industries add around 30 kinds of additives. most of them are poisonous in high doses. A few of them contains nanoparticles, which means they can cross the intestines and flow with the blood and degrade many organs ( cancers). Eventually, these nano-ingredients will be banned and the multinational will be unable to contest the electronic microscopes (the power of technology). For example, the dioxyde of Titanium or additive E71, just to “whiten” the product. Several ingredients are mainly used to retain water, thus adding half of the weight in the sold products
Most of these chemical additives in food are pure poisons and supposedly are just used to satisfy the idiosyncrasies of clients in the look, the color and consistency of the food. I doubt the multinational food industries experiment on the specific idiosyncrasies of clients around the globe, just imposing the “palate”/taste and smell of the colonial powers idiosyncrasies. Obesity, diabetes and cancer causing ingredients… are Not labeled “Can kill you” as in cigarette boxes.
Lately, pressured by “Green Food” campaigns and alternative food preparations, many agro-businesses substitute a few ingredients with “Auxiliary technology” ingredient/products, which are Not required to be listed as ingredients, because these ingredients disappear after the food is cooked. Many of these Auxiliary technology ingredients are enzymes types and proteins, even those extracted from cow bloods.
Lately, the best way that I “know” that I did fall asleep is that I could recall “I had a dream”. Most of the dreams I cannot stand: I am being humiliated and cannot react accordingly. I respond with a half-waking sleep to cope with my lethargy to react, and then I force myself to wake up. And I spend a few hours watching lousy movies, feeling in a wretched diminished state.
In a lengthy documentary on Agro industries. the business could eliminate 20 out of the 30 ingredients for a healthy product and substitute many with “natural” ingredients.
Don’t dwell on this irrational harang: “Resist to your famine in the name of Nationalism“. At least 3 billion people are degraded to accept the misery of their “destiny” in order to satisfy imperialistic economy.
Mammalian scientists claim that it is the females that start the process of mating season. I cannot buy these one-way cause and effects. I conjecture that the males vastly contribute to this process with their cry of “distress” to mate. And the female respond by increasing the level of their pheromone , a catalyst to entice the mating.
I think many would like to die in their sleep, preferable while dreaming of a hot Sexy story in order to go straight to heaven and compare with the Houris
After 53 years, the verdict from The Hague Friday: The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. How many Israelis are feeling the heat?
The U.S is the only advanced nation that doesn’t guarantee paid vacation time to workers, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
The US has the highest number of hospitalizations from preventable causes of illnesses and the highest rate of avoidable deaths relative to other wealthy nations, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
It is Not worth it to give your opinions on social medias if you are Not ready to open up your deep emotions and personal experiences. Better make sure you are at least paid for your faked opinions
If paying attention to your breathing for a couple of minutes is so hard, how getting curious of the level of addiction to smoking and consuming alcohol is a simple task? How the tastes and feels of addictive substances is tagged as a simpler task?
Many people climbed the highest mountains in their profession, only to discover they were climbing the wrong mountain that didn’t deliver on the proper emotions and desires.
If the schooling system denies you to learn patience, focus and comprehension, you’ll have to learn on your own these hardest attitudes.
Any which way you think of it, Life has no meaning in the end. The best way to sustain this foolish reality is to learn to be confident in the passion of the talent you are endowed with.
Most financial bubbles are often engineered by governments, especially powerful Nations that has the right to print money at wish. With plenty of cash money in the market, the government increase the interest rate for stocks that are issued, until the economic reality blow the faked wealth.
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