Hodges' Model: Welcome to the QUAD: May 2024

Hodges' model is a conceptual framework to support reflection and critical thinking. Situated, the model can help integrate all disciplines (academic and professional). Amid news items, are posts that illustrate the scope and application of the model. A bibliography and A4 template are provided in the sidebar. Welcome to the QUAD ...

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Point Nemo: 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W

The oceanic pole of inaccessibility

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Point Nemo: 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W
                 
Social care
 






Al-Othman, H. Notes from the remotest place on Earth: father and son voyage to Point Nemo. The Sunday Times, 31 March 2024. p.11.

https://brown.co.uk/expeditions/point-nemo

Image: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/nemo.html

Sunday, May 26, 2024

Reablement, Rehabilitation, Recovery: Everyone’s business c/o BGS


In March 2023, we published Joining the dots: A blueprint for preventing and managing frailty in older people. This set out seven touchpoints of care that should be available to older people, as and when they need them and 12 recommendations to systems. One of the recommendations is specifically around the provision of rehabilitation and one of the touchpoints is ‘Integrated urgent community response, reablement, rehabilitation and intermediate care.’  

In this new document, we take a deep dive into this Blueprint recommendation, looking at the evidence behind the provision of rehabilitation for older people and highlighting examples of best practice from across the UK and internationally. We argue that rehabilitation should be a component of virtually all care for older people, across all care settings, and that there is no such thing as ‘no rehabilitation potential.’ 

This document has been led by Professor Anne Hendry, Honorary Professor at the University of the West of Scotland and Senior Associate at the International Foundation for Integrated Care and a group of BGS members from across the UK and across disciplines have contributed to drafting the document. We hope that BGS members, commissioners and system leaders will find it useful in planning rehabilitation services for older people in their communities. 

More information - full report.

Tuesday, May 21, 2024

'Holistic pluralism'

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Rational choice theory

Natural sciences

theoretical & methodological pluralism

functionalism


Social sciences - Humanities


policy



from Abstract:

"The theoretical and methodological pluralism that we suggest here, holistic pluralism, is one way to overcome incommensurability between the natural and the social sciences while avoiding functionalism, technological and environmental determinism, and over-reliance on rational choice theory." 

from Introduction:

"The fact that sustainability science is “dealing with interconnected problems” (Kauffman and Arico 2014:413) requires that researchers in the field take a comprehensive, integrated, and participatory approach to science and reality (Sala et al. 2013). This explicit ambition to integrate knowledge—across scales, sectors, and substance domains, and across the nature-society, science-society, and knowledge-action divides—implies that sustainability science must inherently live up to (at least) three things. It must build on several foundational disciplines and have the capacity for interdisciplinarity; it must embrace theoretical and methodological pluralism and have the capacity for reflexivity (Isgren et al. 2017); and it must integrate knowledge generated from engaging with different disciplines, theories, methods, and contexts, and thus aspire to transdisciplinarity. Rather than merging or unifying the actual disciplines or their theories and methods into integrated frameworks, we argue that pluralism is the best way forward for dealing with sustainability challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, land use change, water scarcity, and ill health. In this article, we use ontological, epistemological, and theoretical reasoning to support our argument. The critical ambition is to provide the rationale for a new approach that has the potential to capture the best available knowledge on social and natural dimensions of sustainability; we call it social fields and natural systems. The problem-solving ambition is to describe the approach and illustrate it in two empirical examples. If successful, this will show how holistic pluralism is one possible way of integrating knowledge across the social and natural science divide."
Figure 2 Olsson, L., & Jerneck, A. (2018).

It may be useful to consider figure 2, using the domains of Hodges' model?

Note how in Hodges' model, as 'political ecology' seeks to interrogate the relationship between society and nature (the environment, the sciences): we see a diametric relation. Inevitably then, the political ecologist must also negotiate, interpret, seek the policy evidence from within; perhaps an output, a creation of citizens?

Olsson, L., & Jerneck, A. (2018). Social fields and natural systems: integrating knowledge about society and nature. Ecology and Society, 23(3). https://www.jstor.org/stable/26799148

Monday, May 20, 2024

NHS Contaminated Blood Scandal UK

UK  - World

Why we need always to acknowledge 
the political in health and health in politics

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"In an interim report, the inquiry chair, Sir Brian Langstaff, said 'wrongs were done at individual, collective and systemic levels'."

                                                                    (UP)
contaminated       blood                             
blood            donors     'dying for 

COVER
 UP


 
scandal            paid          justice'    
(screening?)







My source: Various - over several decades.

Photograph: Daily Express
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1795449/rishi-sunak-infected-blood-inquiry-heckled-booed

Sunday, May 19, 2024

health - Human - LIFE: Career

As highlighted previously, the full title of Hodges' model was originally The Health Career Model.


Reference to 'career' in there, caused many visitors to the first website, and presumably readers of Brian's book chapter:

Hodges, B.E. (1989) The Health Career Model, IN, Hinchcliffe, S.M. (et al.) 1989 Nursing Practice and Health Care, 1st Edition only, London, Edward Arnold.

- to assume the model concerned professional careers, jobs, and employment.

For this reason after some discussion 'care domains' was added:

Hodges' Health Career - Care Domains - Model

A bit ungainly, but it is important that 'health career' was retained. After 5-10 years since first encountering and applying the model in a case study (1987-88), a key appeal of the model for me was its seeming increase in relevance. This may be a function of familiarity, preoccupation, (growing) obsession but the book below by Goldschmidt is confirmation for me.

Goldschmidt describes the 'Career and the Life Cycle' identifying several stages:
  • Infantile preadaptation
  • Training
  • Career launching
  • Career establishment
  • Career maintenance (pp.113-114).
The first, infantile preadaptation appears associate strongly with the idea of life chances. 

Goldschmidt begins: 
"Career is a lifetime process. The word process here is important. If the English language did not render it too awkward, it would be preferable to make a verb out of it: careering. The major phases in the process relate to the physiological changes as the individual moves from infancy toward his ultimate death." p.113.
"The pursuit of career is not merely a social phenomenon in the sense that the values and purposes are socially derived and hence attainment is reflexive of community attitudes, but because career performance always involves two highly social orientations: collaboration and identification. It is a social performance. No person achieves satisfaction going it alone; he must collaborate with diverse others, usually socially structured groups - family or household, clan, age-mates, work associates, or whatever." p.117.
We need to understand that life chances are often determined before life.


   Individual - Self         
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HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      
 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 
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   Dyad - Group - Culture - Population 
Identity

Work, roles, activity
 for all.

"The activities of the motivated individual can be conceptualized as his or her career. By career I mean that trajectory through life which each person undergoes, the activities he or she engages in to satisfy physical needs and wants and the even more important social needs and wants. The career, then, is activated in the service of both the physical being and the symbolic self."p.107.


The HUMAN CAREER

Policy
Politics

The health career and human career
of future generations
and all life.

Artificial Intelligence -
Future 'careers'?


Today, the health career entails consideration of the life cycle of all life as we not only contemplate planetary health, but seek to assure the biosphere.


Goldschmidt, W. (1990). The human career: The self in the symbolic world. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Book cover: https://biblio.co.nz/walter-goldschmidt/author/99497


Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Yves Klein 'Anthropométrie sans titre'

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Anthropométrie sans titre (ANT 43),
c1960 © Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan





My source: Rotraut to Baya Simons. My husband, Yves Klein, FT Weekend, HTSI, 11 May 2024. pp.23-24.

Yves Klein and the Tangible World is at Lévy Gorvy Dayan until 25 May, levygorvydayan.com

Monday, May 13, 2024

Salt Awareness Week

Individual
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HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      
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Group
[My] attention, priorities, beliefs, mindset(s) ..
Knowledge
Health literacy
(All literacies)
Choices
Decision making
Motivation
My health:
Physical AND Mental


Responsible for..?
Culture
Lifestyle
Friends - Family
Dining custom & practice

Food Industry
National - Global action
Policy - Law
Health Economics (Price of foods)
Food labelling
Impact of Climate Change



My source: Twi/X

Saturday, May 11, 2024

Summer reading and books for review

I look forward to reading and reviewing these books. Many thanks to:

  • Tom Griffiths - Julian Richer's office
  • CUP
  • Springer Nature Customer Service

Julian Richer (Author), Kate Miller (Editor) (2024) Our Housing Disaster: - and what we can do about it. London: Richer Publishing and Media. 
https://www.richersounds.com/our-housing-disaster.html

Joaquim Braga & Mário Santiago de Carvalho (eds.) (2021) Philosophy of Care - New Approaches to Vulnerability, Otherness and Therapy. Cham: Springer Verlag.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-75478-5

I will advise on how / whether informs my online presentation this coming week at:


Fritjof Capra, Pier Luigi Luisi (2014) The Systems View of Life - A Unifying Vision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/life-sciences/genomics-bioinformatics-and-systems-biology/systems-view-life-unifying-vision?format=HB&isbn=9781107011366 

All three could have a role to play?

Friday, May 10, 2024

Towards isomorphisms in Hodges' model

"The concept that best captures the process of homogenization is isomorphism. In Hawley's (1968) description, isomorphism is a constraining process that forces one unit in a population to resemble other units that face the same set of environmental conditions. At the population level, such an approach suggests that organizational characteristics are modified in the direction of increasing comparability with environmental characteristics; the number of organizations in a population is a function of environmental carrying capacity; and the diversity of organizational forms is isomorphic to environmental diversity." p.149.

"We identify three mechanisms through which institutional isomorphic change occurs, each with its own antecedents: 1) coercive isomorphism that stems from political influence and the problem of legitimacy; 2) mimetic isomorphism resulting from standard responses to uncertainty; and 3) normative isomorphism, associated with professionalization. This typology is an analytic one: the types are not always empirically distinct." p.150.

DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. American Sociological Review, 48(2), 147–160. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095101

"Some of them went further, using approaches based in political economy, world systems theory, and theories of neocolonialism and underdevelopment to show that economic imperatives on a global scale were a major force in shaping education worldwide. Others interpreted such change through an institutional lens, arguing that the convergence toward accepted models of modernity has resulted in a process of educational isomorphism within and across countries." p.1.

Carnoy, M., & Rhoten, D. (2002). What Does Globalization Mean for Educational Change? A Comparative Approach. Comparative Education Review, 46(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1086/324053

"The movement is inspired by Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902), who coined the term zoonosis, arguing that there should be no dividing lines between animal and human medicine. This position has been gathering momentum in the last fifteen years. The One Health Initiative is a rather daring interdisciplinary alliance that unites physicians, osteopaths, veterinarians, dentists, nurses, and other scientific-health and environmentally related disciplines, on the basis of a simple hypothesis, which is the isomorphism of structures between humans and animals in immunology, bacteriology, and vaccine developments. This means that humans are both exposed and vulnerable to new diseases, like bird flu and other epidemics, which they share with animal species." p.16.

Rosi Braidotti. (2015). Yes, There Is No Crisis. Working Towards the Posthumanities. DiGeSt. Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, 2(1–2), 9–20. https://doi.org/10.11116/jdivegendstud.2.1-2.0009

"The chapter begins by developing the logic of strategic voting in a single- member district system, thus won by whichever party or candidate gets the most votes (first past the post, or FPTP). This represents the simplest and easiest case for the logic of strategic voting, and similarities (and sometimes theoretical isomorphism) exist between strategic voting— sometimes called instrumental voting (or voting as an investment)— and expected- utility maximization." p.3.

Aldrich, J. H., Blais, A., & Stephenson, L. B. (2018). Strategic Voting and Political Institutions. In J. H. Aldrich, A. Blais, & L. B. Stephenson (Eds.), The Many Faces of Strategic Voting: Tactical Behavior in Electoral Systems Around the World (pp. 1–27). University of Michigan Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvh4zhzr.4 

"Let us take a closer look at this important topic: what might be termed the isomorphism between the realm of care and the realm of perception/oikeiôsis-allotriôsis." p.57.

Joaquim Braga & Mário Santiago de Carvalho (eds.) (2021). Philosophy of Care - New Approaches to Vulnerability, Otherness and Therapy. Cham: Springer Verlag.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-75478-5

- will add here ... suggestions welcome h2cmng AT yahoo.co.uk

Thursday, May 09, 2024

Being constantly rational - in pursuit of evidence . . .


. . . while being chased by the absurd . . .



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Descartes’ - cogito ergo sum^

A psychological case formulation for ...?

(Being constantly …) rational^

... in pursuit of evidence


Drama: A case formulation for the audience.


Absurd: When £££$$$ meets health 

- the where of when the audience aren't interested in the how, and why of the case formulation.


The theatre of the absurd does not need language.
Hodges' model?
In absurd terms the structure must go! No ifs ands or buts ...
Replace the intellectual concepts with poetic images
 but before you do optimise for distance from sense. 

"In the Theatre of the Absurd, the audience is confronted with actions that lack apparent motivation, characters that are in constant flux, and often happenings that are clearly outside the realm of rational* experience. Here, too, the audience can ask 'What is going to happen next?' But then anything may happen next, so that the answer to this question cannot be worked out according to the rules of ordinary probability based on motives and characterizations that will remain constant throughout the play. The relevant question here is not so much what is going to happen next but what is happening? 'What does the action of the play represent?'" Esslin. (p.416).

*and relational?

^D’ANDREA, F. (2017). BEING HUMAN. A FEW REMARKS ABOUT DESCARTES’ COGITO ERGO SUM. Studi Di Sociologia, 55(2), 135–146. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26479662

Esslin, Martin. Chapter 8 The Significance of the Absurd. The Theatre of the Absurd. London: Pelican, 1982. (3rd Ed.).

Previously: relational - rational

Tuesday, May 07, 2024

BCS Specialist Group on AI : SGAI Virtual Seminar - 8th May UK

Welcome

The SGAI Virtual Seminar Series is a new series of free evening Zoom events, open to all, which ultimately we intend to run monthly from October to June on a Wednesday evening from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. (UK time). No prior registration is needed.

It is organised on behalf of BCS SGAI - the BCS Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence.

The next seminar in the series will be on Wednesday May 8th from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. (UK time).

There will be talks by Matt Armstrong-Barnes, Chief Technology Officer, Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, who asks 

‘If Artificial Intelligence is mainstream and the cornerstone of digital transformation, why do so many projects fail?”

and by Dr Diego Maseda Fernández, an Acute and General Internal Medicine Consultant, whose topic is ‘Large Language Models in Healthcare: What Frontline Clinicians Are Being Told’.


This will be followed by a tutorial by students at the University of Southampton entitled ‘Large Language Models: Democratise AI with Low-Code/No-Code’.

My source: Email today.

Monday, May 06, 2024

Book: "The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - and How The World Lost its Mind"

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mind . . .

- and there was I ...

I always thought heat rises?

'heat sinks'

minima - maxima

'accountability ...
... 
...
...
... sinks'





Felix Martin (2024) Computer says no, Life&Arts, FTWeekend, 6-7 April 2024, p.9.

Friday, May 03, 2024

ERCIM News No. 137 Special Theme "Extended Reality (XR)"

 Dear ERCIM News reader,

A new ERCIM News issue (Number 137) is online with a special Extended Reality (XR). This special theme on XR highlights the innovative ways researchers are addressing complex challenges and transforming our interaction with information and the world through immersive experiences and advanced data analytics.

You can access the issue at https://ercim-news.ercim.eu/

This special theme was coordinated by our guest editors Ioannis Chatzigiannakis (Sapienza University of Rome and CNIT), Holger Graf (Fraunhofer IGD), Manos Kamarianakis (University of Crete), and Aris Lalos (ISI).

Thank you for reading ERCIM News!

Please share this issue with anyone who might find it interesting. You can also support us on Twitter (@ercim_news) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/ercim). Let's keep the conversation going and share the latest updates together!

Next issue:

No. 138, July 2024
Special Theme: "Sustainable Cities". Submissions are welcome! See call for contributions.

Announcements in this issue:

  • Call for Proposals: Dagstuhl Seminars and Perspectives Workshops - Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik is accepting proposals for scientific seminars/workshops in all areas of computer science.
  • ERCIM "Alain Bensoussan" Fellowship Programme - Postdoctoral fellowships available at leading European research institutions. Simple application procedure. Next application deadline: 30 September 2024.
  • Call for Papers: Forum Beyond Compliance 2024: Research Ethics in the Digital Age
  • 43rd SAFECOMP 2024 and 19th DECSoS Workshop - Florence, Italy, 17-20 September 2024
  • Call for Papers: Edge AI Meets Swarm Intelligence - Dubrovnik, Croatia, 18 September 2024

ERCIM News is published quarterly by ERCIM, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics. With the printed and online edition, ERCIM News reaches more than 10000 readers.
All issues published to date are available online.


About ERCIM

ERCIM - the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics - aims to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase cooperation with European industry. Leading European research institutes are members of ERCIM. ERCIM is the European host of W3C.

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Help us build the future - Medical Aid Films' Annual Survey 2024

On Tuesday, 30 April 2024 at 14:37:02 BST, Helen Coombe, UK <helen AT medicalaidfilms.org> wrote:

At Medical Aid Films, we are asking ourselves how we can respond to the scaling up of innovative digital information and communication technologies whilst continuing to place our primary audiences at the centre of our work – ‘ensuring people-centred systems that are enabled by digital health[i]’, one of the objectives of the WHO Digital Health Strategy 2020 – 2025. It is important to us that any digital strategy reflects the needs and aspirations of the healthcare professionals we serve. We invite any healthcare professional to complete our 2024 online annual survey to help inform forthcoming digital initiatives. Your insights will provide us with a comprehensive understanding of what matters most around training and health education and how we can best serve your needs. 

c/o Medical Aid Films 

The survey can be accessed here - https://forms.gle/iX3XGCk2rqSGWXyJA

the deadline to respond is Monday 13th May

Thank you for helping support our work.


[i] WHO Global strategy on digital health 2020-2025, https://www.who.int/health-topics/digital-health#tab=tab_1



Helen Coombe, Head of Research, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning. Medical Aid Films, c/o Zavros Mintikkis Associates Ltd, 1st Floor, 446a Green Lanes, London, N13 5XD

HIFA* profile: Helen Coombe is Head of Evaluation and Research at Medical Aid Films, UK.

helen AT medicalaidfilms.org

*My source.

Thursday, May 02, 2024

Natural asset companies - 'Small is Beautiful'

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Group

What I value and the values I hold.

Philosophy

Nature - Nature has Intrinsic Value


What we value and the values we hold.


Natural Asset Companies

The continuity of capitalism, or new approaches?



 My prompt - following and commenting in chat:
'Part II of the Small is Beautiful Celebration' The Schumacher Institute

Apparently nature has intrinsic value and 'natural asset companies' are a thing (for good or ill is another Q. -  continuity of capitalism? Is this one way where (literally) SMALL comes in? As nature locally has value, citizens are stakeholders (in the country by proxy)? But then how as societies do we compensate urban environments and those who clamour for - see the future in 'smart' cities? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/18/business/economy/natural-assets.html
See also:
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/intrinsic-value-ecology-and-conservation-25815400/
Sandler, R. (2012) Intrinsic Value, Ecology, and Conservation. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):4.

Lydia DePillis, Nature Has Value. Could We Literally Invest in It? The New York Times. “Natural asset companies” would put a market price on improving ecosystems, rather than on destroying them. 18th February 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/18/business/economy/natural-assets.html

Wednesday, May 01, 2024

Hodges' model: A tool for Curation

CURATION
"Curation helps solve the problems of today and tomorrow. It's the mass sourcing of the expertise needed to navigate and comprehend the saturated, complex markets* of the twenty-first century." p.166.

Bhaskar also lists (and briefly introduces) the principles of curation:
  • Saving time
  • Freeing cognitive resources
  • Sparing us anxiety
  • Maximising utility
  • Cutting down complexity
  • Finding quality
  • Overcoming information overload
  • Creating contrast 
  • Redefining creativity
  • Channeling attention
  • Providing context
  • Beating overproduction (pp.167-168).

*To markets above, I would add disciplines and professions.

By definition an aide-mémoire should save us time. 

The structure of Hodges' model provides a conceptual scaffold, a substrate affording us cognitive economy.

Through selection (self guided discovery) we are assuring data, information gathering, properly supervised this should spare us anxiety.

We are trying to ensure the effective use of our time, and efficiently zero-in on the concepts that are salient.

By reducing complexity, we increase the relevance and value of what is noted, recorded, acted upon. Data, facts, observations that are not redundant can be dismissed.

Contrast is co-confirmed by using innate oppositions, polarities and dichotomies with attention on the other and the middle.

When needed, Hodges' model can explode subject headings, concepts assisting exploration and creativity, potentially assisting at a transdisciplinary level.

Context rationalisation by testing and filtering a situation, helps to focus attention.

Duplication and repetition do not foster sustainable services, but there should always be scope for verification and person-centredness.
"As the eighteenth-century English painter Joshua Reynolds put it, 'Simplicity is an exact medium between too little and too much.' Curation helps ensure that exact medium." p.159. 

Bhaskar. M. (2016) Curation: The power of selection in a world of excess. London: Piatkus.

Book image: Waterstones.

See also: Is Hodges' model a selection machine?