Pioneering Ideas

Explore our Blog Our Blog

Now Viewing: Healthy communities
Dec 21 2012

Pioneering Idea: Your Patient’s Community Health Needs Assessment on the Desktop

Dec 21, 2012, 10:06 AM, Posted by Ted Eytan

Ted Eytan Ted Eytan

In medical school, we were taught an ahead-of-its-time curriculum called "Community Oriented Primary Care." It looks like now we're going to get to be able to practice it.

When I was with the Project HealthDesign (@PrjHealthDesign) team in Nashville earlier this year (see: A visit to Project HealthDesign and the patient voice, spoken through their observations of daily living | Ted Eytan, MD), we participated in an interesting exercise while wearing silly hats. It involved turning our thinking 180 degrees around about the future of health.

 

View Full Post

Nov 16 2012

Don’t Be a Jerk: To Manage Big Change, Help Preserve the Precious Past

Nov 16, 2012, 12:48 PM, Posted by Mike Painter

Mike Painter Mike Painter

I had the recent good fortune to attend an Institute of Medicine Roundtable workshop on the Promotion of Health Equity and the Elimination of Health Disparities called Leveraging Culture to Address Health Inequalities: Examples from Native Communities.  The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation supported the November 14, 2012 Seattle event.  The meeting was a gathering of American Indian, Alaska and Hawaiian Native health and health care leaders, all talking about health and culture.  They told stories of resilient, strong, vibrant, conquered yet not vanquished people.  Their tales were wondrous and sad—troubling, provocative, sometimes angry, often humorous.  

One might think the IOM was doing a good, almost charitable, thing by shining some precious attention on these people. How nice for experts to listen politely to those stories of past cultures struggling against waves of current change.  Well, it was a good thing—but not necessarily just for the natives.  There was immense, quiet wisdom and power there—for everybody. 

View Full Post