Webinar: 8 April Humanizing Health Care Through Relationality -

Exploring The Science And Practice Of Community Engagement

Join us for the first of four webinars co-hosted by the WHO Department of Integrated Health Services (IHS) and the Global Health Partnerships (GHP) (formerly THET). This webinar series is based on a new policy report launched at the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) -

https://wish.org.qa/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Relationality-in-Community-Engagement.pdf 

The report revisits foundational concepts of community and examines how a deeper understanding of the relational nature of community engagement can contribute to improving quality of health care and transforming health systems. The webinar series hopes to inspire a shared understanding of community engagement’s transformative potential and how it can be leveraged for people-led change.

Continued ...

 Previously: relational :: community :: scale

c/o A.Word.A.Day: Hodges' model - Walk the (dual!) chalk line

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Having a tool is like having a superpower in your pocket. With the right gadget, you can do much more than what arms and legs alone allow -- build a magnificent pyramid, lift water from deep below, or even predict whether you’ll need an umbrella tomorrow.

And not all tools need wires, batteries, or instruction manuals. Sometimes, a simple device can save labor -- a lever, a pulley, a piece of string dusted with chalk -- can save hours of sweat and toil.

This week we’re spotlighting tools that didn’t just stay in the toolbox. They leveled up and became metaphors. These handy expressions help us build meaning, draw lines, and cut through confusion.

What’s your favorite tool or device? Do you carry a screwdriver, a multi-tool, or something else that makes you feel ready for anything, MacGyver style? Share on our website or email us at words@wordsmith.org. Don’t forget to include your location (city, state).

chalk line

MEANING:

noun:
1. A standard of proper behavior.
2. A line made with chalk or a similar substance.

ETYMOLOGY:

From chalk, from Old English cealc, from Latin calx (lime) + line, from Old French ligne (line), from Latin linum (flax). Earliest documented use: 1450.

NOTES:

Builders and carpenters use a tool called chalk line. It has a reel with a chalk-coated string, which when stretched tight and snapped leaves a straight line across a surface.

USAGE:

“‘They were tough, but they were fair. In other words, they made us walk the chalk line. But it did not hurt us one bit. We learned,’ Kissell said.”
Dillon Carr; Former Educators, Students Say Goodbye to St. Florian School; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (Pennsylvania); Feb 20, 2017.

c/o Picasso - 'Massacre in Korea' (1951)

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

                                 - Pablo Picasso

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

HUMANISTIC - mind

body - MECHANISTIC "The 'beat' goes on"!?

'Massacre in Korea' (1951)

My source:

Vivienne Chow, How Picasso became a prize for Asia's new collectors, Collecting, FTWeekend. 22-23 March 2025, p.3.

See also: 

https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/exhibitions/ (15 March - 13 July 2025)

Image: https://www.pablopicasso.org/

https://www.pablopicasso.org/massacre-in-korea.jsp

Disability and the rise of 'mental health', or something else?

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

mental DISABILITY	physical DISABILITY
social DISABILITY	The Times 28 March 2025, p.1. POLITICAL disability^

Chris Smyth, One in four Britons claim they have a disability, The Times, 28 March 2025, p.1.

https://www.thetimes.com/profile/chris-smyth

See also - (not reliable however):

Google Ngrams: mental illness, mental health, well being, mindfulness, 1800-2022

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=mental+illness,+mental+health,+well+being,+mindfulness&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3

^The Government are deploying AI to figure out:

• how to raise an army, air force, navy, space and cyber force?
• how to fight a war?
• how to sustain a workforce, to support an ageing population.

An improbable response:

Robots, drones, tech-enhanced machines with AI.

Africa's Nutrition Movement: Seizing the Window with Primary Health Care

Africa's mission to eliminate malnutrition is more critical than ever. Bubbling down the high level commitments to strategic programmable goals will be critical at primary health care and community levels.

The continent has made significant progress in recent years, but the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for sustained efforts to address the complex issues surrounding malnutrition, particularly for women and children as we build traction to meet the sustainable development goals by 2030.

"The year 2025 will also be significant as it marks the end of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition. N4G Paris will serve as a multi-stakeholder summit, advocating for ambitious financial and political commitments and fostering dialogue among diverse actors from around the world, including governments, international organizations, research institutions, civil society organizations, philanthropies, private sector entities, and more." - #N4G

Connecting dots is a a key imperative as we build Africa's nutrition movement. One of them is viewing nutrition from a programmable health systems lens. Have we given this enough traction ?

"The N4G conference presents a crucial opportunity for Africa to gain traction on its mission to eliminate malnutrition. The conference aims to mobilize ambitious financial and political commitments, foster dialogue among diverse stakeholders, and put nutrition at the center of the sustainable development agenda." - United Nations SDGs Professional Support Group for Africa

One of the key lessons from COVID-19 is the importance of strengthening health systems, particularly at the primary healthcare level. The pandemic has exposed weaknesses in many health systems, highlighting the need for increased investment in health care infrastructure, workforce, and services which will ultimately impact on nutrition delivery at the base of the health system.

The upcoming Africa Primary Health Care Forum , scheduled for Abuja on July 14-15, 2025, will provide a platform for stakeholders to discuss the importance of primary health care(PHC) in achieving universal health coverage (UHC) and health security, as well addressing malnutrition in PHC systems. The forum will also explore the role of digital health, digitised workforce, partnerships and financing in strengthening primary healthcare systems and improving general health outcomes.

More details continued at: https://www.phc.africa/

Vectors of the Biopolitical - (Chap. 2) c/o Bull

The Concept of the Social

'From one sentence in Aristotle derive two arresting theoret- ical discourses of the twenty-first century: Michel Foucault's biopolitics, provocatively reformulated by Giorgio Agamben in terms of the relationship between sovereignty and the body, and the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum as a means of evaluating and promoting development, justice and freedom. Both are characterized by deep reflection on the sources of Western political thought, and by urgent engagement with contemporary social and legal problems. Both are in some sense biopolitical in that they are shaped by the interplay of the same Aristotelian categories the human and the animal, politics and nature. But they are on opposite sides of the divide that has opened up in the human sciences since the 1960s, and there currently seems no optic through which they might simultaneously be viewed, no way of integrating or comparing their insights.

 

In part, this reflects a situation in which political debate appears to have fragmented into a multiplicity of single issues. The ancient 'Who will rule?' and the modern 'Who shall have what?' have been supplemented by an array of questions that deal with matters once exclusively cultural, personal or natural. For previous eras, the relative integrity and unmalleability of cultures, bodies and environments rendered such questions redundant. Now they frequently appear unanswerable from within established political traditions, and incommensurable in relation to each other. Within this expanded field, biopolitics and the capabilities approach have unusual salience and potential, for both bundle together issues otherwise assumed to be distinct. If they, in turn, could be coordinated, perhaps we could begin to map the new territory.' p.68.

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

'Who shall have what?'	nature human - animal bio-
culture	political 'Who will rule?'

Bull, M. (2021) The Concept of the Social, London: Verso.

Objectify me by Nicola L.

Individual

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

Group

'You can touch my breasts, caress my stomach, my sex. But, I repeat it, it is the last time,' - read a note L. left in a drawer.	Nicola L.  'La Femme Commode' (1969)

Nicola L.

My source: Stoppard, L. Objectify me, House&Home, FTWeekend, 5-6 October 2024, pp.1-2.

Trauma - MUSIC PRESCRIPTION - James Rhodes

 'By now we're all familiar with the idea of music as therapy. For James Rhodes, however, music can be equivalent - at times even preferable - to  medication in the management of mental health. "Obviously, I am in favour of medication when it is necessary to save lives," says the 49-year-old British-Spanish classical pianist, when I meet him at Peregrine's, an upmarket piano shop in Clerkenwell, central London. "I was on medication and it genuinely saved my life. What I'm not in favour of is medication as a kind of easy option instead of doing other things that will also have the same effect. And there's no question that music [can]." 

 Manía, Rhodes's new album, is driven by that philosophy. Traversing swaths of classical territory, from JS Bach to 20th-century Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, it is an attempt to profile the therapeutic properties of music from all angles, "I've always loved this idea of prescribing pieces," says Rhodes. As someone who has struggled with his own mental health, he says he has selected works that "accompany me and my insomnia, my anxiety, my desperation and my fears in the middle of the night"'. p.13.

My source:
Nepilová, H. Music on prescription, Arts, Life&Arts, FTWeekend. 8-9 March 2025. p.13.

INDIVIDUAL

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

MANiA	DRUG PRESCRIPTION ARTS PRESCRIPTION ...
SOCIAL PRESCRIBING

4Ps - human-MACHINE :: HUMAN-machine

HODGES' MODEL: Axes & Domains

As visited many times here on W2tQ, in Hodges' model I've associated one of 4P's with each of the model's care/knowledge domains. I immediately associated PROCESS with the sciences domain (physical, chemical, biological, geological..), driven by the seemingly process-bound approach of project management, logistics, automation and sequencing. 

This preoccupation can work to the detriment of the user(s) of systems (the public!), devices, interfaces and administrations - record management for example. Allied with POLICY in the political domain you can end up with a massive and technocratic bureaucracy. 

In nursing there was concern when the nursing process emerged that progress of individualised, person-centred care would be overwhelmed with a return to task-oriented care. Patients would literally be processed, in what is a problem-solving algorithm: assess, plan, intervene, evaluate.

Of course,  as in all idealised models, there is overlap between the 4Ps and the model's domains. We speak routinely of social, psychological, and political processes.

The rise of AI however prompts (demands) this debate be re-visited:

SELF / INDIVIDUAL  -  OBJECT / THING

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

the human - PURPOSE(S) the machine -	- can become machine PROCESS - can become human
PRACTICE socio-	POLICY -political

Previously: 'ethics' : 'nursing process' : '4Ps'

Is it? Can it be? An elevator pitch!

How many times have people asked me?

"If you were to explain Hodges' model as an elevator pitch what would you say?"

So, what would it be?

I wrote this on twitter and think it's a step in the right direction - domains: 

There is -

              *Person, self, individual ..

*Other(s), collective, pop.. 

      (a) person has MIND & BODY (for now!) 

(a) person is supported by ALL Others 

We call this Humanity

For the majority all bridges *cognitively* accessible:

  https://hodges-model.blogspot.com 

n.b. Politicians, policy makers