Hodges' Model: Welcome to the QUAD: world

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 ...

Showing posts with label world. Show all posts
Showing posts with label world. Show all posts

Friday, June 26, 2026

World Justice Report: a Plan for Equality and Prosperity Within Planetary Boundaries

Box 1: Combining Global Equality and Planetary Habitability

The Global Justice Report describes desirable future scenarios combining two key goals: socioeconomic equality (including full equality between countries, full gender equality in labour hours and pay, sharp compression of within country income and wealth scales, combined with fair access to education, health and political voice), and planetary habitability (aligning global resource use within ecological boundaries, including a limitation of global temperature rise below 2°C). 

To avoid climate catastrophes, we show that sufficiency is required: a structural transformation of the economy involving shorter working hours, a lower material footprint, a shift from material-intensive sectors toward relatively immaterial sectors such as education and health, and major changes in food systems and land use. Rapid decarbonization of energy systems is also necessary, as is the sharp compression of income and wealth inequality. This compression is both a social justice objective and a condition for financing necessary climate investment and human capital expenditure and for sustaining political support from bottom- and middle-income classes in both the North and the South. 

Box 2: Material and Monetary Accounting for Democratic Debate

Economy and ecology cannot be debated apart: every economic activity has a material footprint, every ecological policy shapes incomes and wealth. To make these links visible, the Global Justice Report uses multidimensional social progress indicators. We set quantitative targets for global socioeconomic justice by combining two complementary languages: material accounting (work hours, sectoral shares, education and health, energy systems, GHG emissions, land use, forest cover, temperature levels) and monetary accounting (income and wealth scales between and within countries, progressive tax rates). The report draws on two centuries of historical data on global inequality and resource use, and on the recent literature on social progress, climate and colonial reparations. 

The Global Justice Report proposes a quantitatively and institutionally grounded step toward global justice. It does not seek to close the debate: it offers a transparent basis on which citizens, unions, parliaments, and international bodies can debate, contest, and decide the course of the coming decades.

...

Chancel, L., Dietrich, J., Mohren, C., Moshrif, R., Odersky, M., Piketty, T., Somanchi, A., et al. (2026), The Global Justice Report: A Plan for Equality & Prosperity Within Planetary Boundaries, World Inequality Lab (gjp.wid.world).

individual
|
INTERPERSONAL
: SCIENCES             
humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL   
|
group 
 


 


SOCIAL JUSTICE




Previously: 'wealth' : 'poverty' : 'social justice'

 My source: BBC Radio 4 World at One.

 

 

Wednesday, March 04, 2026

The invention of language

7 After the Fall
'Adam's one task in the Garden had been to invent language, to give each creature and thing its name. In that state of innocence, his tongue had gone straight to the quick of the world. His words had not been merely appended to the things he saw, they had revealed their essences, had literally brought them to life. A thing and its name were interchangeable. After the fall, this was no longer true. Names became detached from things, words devolved into a collection of arbitrary signs; language had been severed fom God. The story of the Garden, therefore, records not only the fall of man, but the fall of language.' 

    Paul Auster

In, Robert C. Stalnaker (2008) Our Knowledge of the Internal World. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. hb. p.132.

Auster, P. (1985) The New York Trilogy (New York: Penguin Books). p.52.

Thursday, June 05, 2025

World Happiness Report 2025

WORLD HAPPINESS REPORT 2025


. . . and looking ahead to WHR 2026 . . .


Prof Lord Richard Layard

Editor, World Happiness Report

In World Happiness Report 2024, we presented evidence of a concerning decline in the wellbeing of young people in Western industrialised countries.

Obviously, a child’s wellbeing matters for the same reason that any individual’s wellbeing matters. But wellbeing among children and adolescents is also critical since it is the best predictor of how happy said child will be in their subsequent life – with a higher predictive power than the qualifications which they might obtain.


There has been much debate about the reasons for such a downward trend, with many competing theories and policy recommendations. However, one explanation has captured public and political attention more than any other: social media.


Also in 2024, Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, published The Anxious Generation, arguing that the decline in youth wellbeing is driven by a transition from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood. The book has been a best-seller and sparked heated debate, both in academia and the wider world.


As editors of the World Happiness Report, we have followed this debate closely, concerned that rigorous science was being overshadowed by shallow media narratives.


In World Happiness Report 2026, we see an opportunity to bring all sides of the debate together to establish the facts, clarify disagreements, and provide decision-makers with a balanced assessment of what we know, what we don’t know, and what should be done.


We’re encouraging researchers from across the world to submit chapter proposals focusing on the relationship between social media and subjective wellbeing before the deadline of Sunday 15 June. Full details are available on the World Happiness Report website.


My source: Email from info AT worldhappiness.report

Previously: 'happiness'

Monday, May 12, 2025

'International Nurse's Day' 2025 #2 - c/o ICN & WHO

State of the World’s Nursing Report 2025


State of the World’s Nursing
Report 2025

'As the world’s nurses celebrate International Nurses Day (IND), ICN issues a rallying cry to governments around the globe for urgent nursing support, following the launch of the second World Health Organization (WHO) State of the World’s Nursing (SOWN) report.

The SOWN report is a vital assessment of the global nursing workforce in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and underscores the urgent need for bold investments in nursing to address shortages, strengthen health systems, and promote global resilience and economic stability.

The SOWN report reflects ICN’s IND 2025 report, Caring for nurses strengthens economies, and related Survey of National Nurses' Association (NNA) Presidents, reinforcing the central role of nurses in achieving global health, including Universal Health Coverage (UHC), and calling for immediate action to address long-standing challenges. The SOWN data presents a mixed picture. It highlights progress in areas such as advanced practice and nursing leadership, but indicates gravely concerning continued workforce shortages, inadequate compensation and working conditions, poor mental health support, inequities in the distribution and employment of nurses, and failures to fully enable nurses as practitioners and health care leaders.'

Continued ...

Caring for nurses strengthens economies



Caring for nurses
strengthens economies


'As we face growing health care challenges, from ageing populations and rising chronic diseases to climate-related emergencies and deepening global inequalities, the need for a strong, sustainable nursing workforce has never been greater. We cannot meet these challenges without sufficient nurses who are themselves well-cared for and supported. ICN’s International Nurses Day report reveals the severity of our current nursing shortage and well-being crisis – and the path forward. ICN’s “Caring for Nurses Agenda” provides a comprehensive roadmap for creating environments where nurses, patients, and entire health care systems can flourish.'

Monday, November 04, 2024

Paths, lines, corners, edges and axes . . .

'If a farmer has made a path, he is able to saunter easily up and down it. That is what the path was made for. But the work of making the path was not a process of sauntering easily, but one of marking the ground, digging, fetching loads of gravel, rolling, and draining. He dug and rolled where there was yet no path, so that he might in the end have a path on which he could saunter without any more digging or rolling. Similarly a person who has a theory can, among other things, expound to himself, or the world, the whole theory, or any part of it; he can, so to speak, saunter in prose from any part to any other part of it. But the work of building the theory was a job of making paths where as yet there were none.' 
Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (1949; Penguin, 1999), p. 272.

path
https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search?q=path

line (line of sight)
https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search?q=line

corners
https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search?q=corners

edges
https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search?q=edges

axes: STRUCTURE
domains: CONTENT

Frayn, Michael (2006). The human touch: our part in the creation of a universe. Notes. London: Faber & Faber. p.425.

Previously: 'Frayn on maths'

I will keep this book a bit longer - chapter 'Home Address' (the self) a good read.

Sunday, April 07, 2024

World Health Day 2024

World Health Day 2024

Around the world, the right to health of millions is increasingly coming under threat.

Diseases and disasters loom large as causes of death and disability.

Conflicts are devastating lives, causing death, pain, hunger and psychological distress.

The burning of fossil fuels is simultaneously driving the climate crisis and taking away our right to breathe clean air, with indoor and outdoor air pollution claiming a life every 5 seconds.

The WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All has found that at least 140 countries recognize health as a human right in their constitution. Yet countries are not passing and putting into practice laws to ensure their populations are entitled to access health services. This underpins the fact that at least 4.5 billion people — more than half of the world’s population — were not fully covered by essential health services in 2021.

To address these types of challenges, the theme for World Health Day 2024 is 'My health, my right’. ...
https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-health-day/2024

My source: HIFA

World Health 24/7/365 . . . also calls for a generic conceptual framework around which individual, family, community and population health can be assessed, planned, formulated, delivered and evaluated.

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Creative symbols ...

 INDIVIDUAL
|

 INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               
HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      
SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 
|
GROUP






!


"One group of protestors printed the Friedmann equation, which governs the expansion of the universe - the name sounds like the words "freed man". Another protestor held up an exclamation mark on a red background: the sign on WeChat when a message can't be delivered." p.23.
 
My source:
World, Evading censors. The creative symbols of dissent, The Guardian, 30 November 2022, p.23.

Image: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Astro/fried.html

Hodges' model as a template: blank 'paper'.

Friday, November 04, 2022

Editorial: "COP27 climate change conference: urgent action needed for Africa and the world" c/o HIFA

Dear HIFA colleagues,

Chris Zielinski and colleagues achieved a remarkable feat by publishing a climate emergency editorial simultaneously in more than 250 journals. What does this tell us about communicating health research to policymakers?

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2022/10/18/bjsports-2022-106442

The point was 'to demonstrate the united will of the medical profession, including all areas (nursing, mental health, veterinary medicine, etc.), to combat the health effects of climate change'.

The key message of the authors is to urge 'wealthy nations to finally step up', particularly to realise 'the promised target of providing US$100 billion of climate finance a year... ensuring these resources focus on increasing resilience to the existing and inevitable future impacts of the climate crisis, as well as on supporting vulnerable nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions'.

The message is supported by a well-worded case, and by a string of references to published research.

The piece is jointly authored by the editors of medical journals, which was presumably a deliberate decision to emphasise solidarity rather than including climate scientists and others.

In relation to 'communicating health research to policymakers' the exercise suggests more can be achieved when scientists work in solidarity and cooperatively than individually and in competition.

It will be interesting to see what happens at COP27. Will there be major steps forward along the lines that this editorial calls for? If so, what were the key contributing factors to the decisions made? One suspects the shared voices of 250-plus journals will play an important role. Moreover, their solidarity and cooperation is in place and ready to take on the next major advocacy challenge.

Best wishes, Neil

Joint Coordinator, HIFA Communicating health research https://www.hifa.org/projects/new-effective-communication-health-research-policymakers

Neil Pakenham-Walsh, Global Coordinator HIFA, www.hifa.org neil AT hifa.org Global Healthcare Information Network: Working in official relations with WHO

Monday, October 10, 2022

World Mental Health Day: Forms of Esteem ...

Tua Tagovailoa
Miami Dolphins, Quarterback


 INDIVIDUAL
|
 INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               
HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      
SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 
|
GROUP

psychological trauma
(or^, personal trauma)


personal choice

Identity

Memory


Motivation

My.. 'Skill-set'

SELF-ESTEEM


Expectations:
*on the field
*off the field


physical trauma


"Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy"

motor impairment

"He lost consciousness as he instinctively assumed the "fencing position" position and his fingers curled and tightened."

"Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who discovered CTE in American football players, watched the Dolphins v Bengals game in horror. He messaged Tagovailoa, saying: .."



social (family) trauma

my children's names


"[ Bennet Omalu ]... If you love your life, if you love your family, your kids - if you have kids, it's time to gallantly walk away. Go find something else to do. Tua, my brother. I love you. I love you as much as I love my son. Stop playing. Stop. Hang your helmet and gallantly walk away."

'pluralistic ignorance'

'Plausible ignorance'

Informed consent
MENTAL CAPACITY
High risk - High reward

"Think of what is still happening in the NFL, of what is happening in rugby, and soon you reach the conclusion that players need to be protected from themselves. Something their sports are absolutely not doing." p.24.

PARITY OF ESTEEM


David Walsh, Latest NFL concussion scandal is a sickening indictment of ... Sport, The Sunday Times, October 9th, 2022, p.24. (Paper copy.)

Mr Walsh also refers to - Head On: Rugby, Dementia and Me (BBC 2 TV)

^ Person-centred?

Monday, May 09, 2022

Global opportunity for midwives & nurse-midwives to contribute to 'Midwives in Focus' research

Dear Colleagues,

In partnership with Coventry University and Jhpiego (with support from the Nursing Now Challenge) we are hosting the 'Midwives in Focus' programme.

We need to recruit 1000's of midwives and nurse-midwives from around the world to participate in our global survey exploring professional identity, midwifery leadership and the representation of midwives around the world.

Survey link here - please complete and share

Survey Link: https://bit.ly/3uERMmZ

Please complete this and share with colleagues.

Thank you

Dr Sally Pezaro 

My source: GANM (Global Alliance for Nursing and Midwifery).

 

Monday, December 13, 2021

6th World Congress of the World Association of Cultural Psychiatry (WACP2022)

ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS 
15 - 17 September 2022 
pre-conference day 14 September 2022

What do we mean by 'culture'?
(draft - ideas...)
 
Individual
|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ------------------------------------------ mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
|
Group
As individuals we are socialised into one or more cultures, depending upon our formative years, parenting and guardianship. Individual capacities and opportunities to learn and life experiences all influence a person's self-identity, their relationship to others and the society in which they reside (when not excluded). A key concept here is salience not just for the person, but the people close to them and the community. Reality can be defined individually, and socially; but it is mediated and ultimately negotiated and determined (often legally) elsewhere. This is why education is so important (to all the literacies?), to all in realising their potential. This begins in infancy and early childhood and must be protected.
A scientific perspective, reference and emphasis on evidence at the expense of personal experience. An approach that might be characterised and described as reductionist. It may see the individual in a mechanistic way, as 'broken' with a deficit, often defined in neurobiochemical and increasingly genetic terms that may not be fully understood by the individual concerned. 'Space' here can be interpreted literally; as ability to respire, to live in - shelter, how much space is 'my space' to live in? Personal recognition, status and hence identity, may be accorded and prioritised by papers I possess, the borders proximate to and bounding my current location and the history (evidence) of my being here.
Sociologically speaking, culture and society are discrete concepts. Cultures vary markedly across the globe, and this richness is to be celebrated. It is here we try to 'sense-make' our own context and that of others and the 'world' - if the opportunities are afforded to us (the social determinants of health are realised). Culture is noisy. Its silence can be deafening. Its vibrancy can be joyous, exemplify humanity at its best. Its modes and mediums of communication can also be subverted and weaponised. COVID-19 continues to reveal the value and values of social capital, local community, belonging and relationships, cooperation and our interdependence.
Culture can also refer to the capacity of an individual and society to not only exercise choice, but the range of choices available, access in a cognitive and physical sense. The political culture can profoundly influence freedom, autonomy and self-expression that an individual may represent through several identities and social roles. The combination of these identities and roles contribute to 'make' them the 'person' they are (or should be). Were an individual is vulnerable the culture 'here' also determines the extent of participation socio-economically,  especially when the individual is alone, in poor health and cannot self-advocate. Societies and cultures need security, law and justice to ensure no one is left behind.

 

My source: twitter @wacp06

Saturday, April 24, 2021

On the Border - In the Border

individual
|
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
|
group


... It is not about the people of Chad
and what's good for them.'" p.8.

"A French diplomat who knew Déby expressed a romantic view of the late president common in Paris, calling him a "warrior" who 'wanted to die in battle rather than in a hospital bed'.
Ayisha Osori of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa said the Parisian view betrayed a casual indifference to the fate of ordinary Chadians. "It just seems fundamentally unfair that the whole world's view of Déby  is 'Oh, we've lost the great soldier'," she said. 'And now we have to do everything to make sure Chad is secure. But we don't really mean Chad, we just mean the borders around Chad. ...

My source:

Munshi, N., Pilling, D. Death of Chad leader spells uncertainty for Sahel, FTWeekend, 24-25 April, 2021, p.8.

Graphic: https://vemaps.com/chad/td-01


Tuesday, April 07, 2020

World Health Day

"The pandemic is a portal.
We can walk through it with our dead ideas.
Or we can walk lightly,
ready to imagine another world."
Arundhati Roy


The pandemic represents five portals:

SOCIAL
SPIRITUAL
POLITICAL
INTRA- INTERPERSONAL
SCIENCES

On our respective journeys, 
we can reflect and think critically 
using the disciplinary-bridges provided to us:

socio-political
psycho-social
physico-political
psycho-political
socio-economic
socio-technical
bio-ethical
...

and through 
love, teamwork and perseverance
we see that ...

"Discipline is the bridge between
goals and accomplishment."
Jim Rohn.


individual
|
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
|
group - population






https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1247547729879891968?s=20

https://www.who.int/publications-detail/nursing-report-2020
State of the World’s Nursing Report - 2020

Roy, A. (2020) The pandemic portal, Life&Arts, FT Weekend, 4-5 April, pp.1-2.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

World Philosophy Day: "Why do we need evidence of mechanisms?"

December 17th 2019, 14h30-16h00

Bordeaux Pellegrin Hospital, Rheumatology Service, 12th floor

Phyllis Illari (University College London, UK)

"Why do we need evidence of mechanisms?" A PhilInBioMed seminar


Open to all


Phyllis Illari is a Senior Lecturer at University College London (Dept of Science & Technology Studies; Faculty of Maths & Physical Sciences) in the UK. She works in the philosophy of science, with particular expertise in causality, mechanisms and information.

Abstract

I will present a view of evidence of mechanisms as evidence of the activities, entities, their organization, and the phenomena they explain, using the idea of ‘minimal mechanism’ (Glennan and Illari, 2018). I will argue that this view allows us to theoretically organize an incredibly diverse array of forms of evidence and empirical practices. I will then home in on a specific way in which evidence of mechanism is crucial, arguing that it is important even for solid evidence of correlation. Any clinical study, even a well-conducted RCT, which is still one of our best methods of establishing a reliable correlation, needs decent answers to two questions: (i) what are the variables for disease, treatment and outcome? and (ii) how and when are they measured and why?

I will use the case of ‘vitamin D deficiency’ to show how important these questions are, even when they are not explicitly addressed in published results, because they are regarded as sufficiently standardised to be unimportant. Until recently, vitamin D deficiency was regarded as well-understood, reliably measurable in standardised ways, and linked to diseases such as rickets by well understood mechanisms. However, recent research has linked vitamin D deficiency to other diseases, in ways that expose the fact that different measuring techniques measure slightly different forms of Vitamin D. Those differences are now relevant.

Considering the case shows how deeply integrative our evidential pluralism needs to be, and therefore how complex our practices of reasoning about evidence are. Philosophical accounts need to be responsive to this.

For more information click here.

Best regards,

Wiebke Bretting
--
Dr. Wiebke Bretting
Project Manager ERC IDEM
ImmunoConcEpT, UMR5164
Université de Bordeaux
146 rue Léo Saignat
33076 Bordeaux
https://www.immuconcept.org/erc-idem/

My source:
Philos-L "The Liverpool List" is run by the Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l/

Saturday, June 22, 2019

Critique Issue 6: The Wartime Quartet Special Issue, 2019


individual
|
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
|
group

Elizabeth Anscombe
Iris Murdoch
Mary Midgley
Philippa Foot

Time

Voices
-
Wartime


In June 2019, Durham University Philosophy Society’s journal, Critique, will publish a special edition on the Wartime Quartet – Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley and Philippa Foot – all of whom were peers and friends at Oxford during the Second World War, going on to become extraordinary philosophers in their own right. Midgley records in her memoir that when the men left for the war, the Quartet were free from the conventions of traditionally male-dominated philosophy. She attributed the Quartet members’ later success to this sudden amplification of their voices.
The members of the Quartet continued to associate, work, and live together long after their undergraduate years. In the thanks, dedications and references of each member’s work you are certain to find the other members too!

2019 will mark the centenary of the group and sees a series of lectures on the Quartet delivered at the Royal Institute of Philosophy – these can be viewed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEQRhXQwUe-1ZKIJmnBvHsw

In consideration of this, the theme for this edition of Critique is the Wartime Quartet. [Up to 26th of May 2019] submissions were sought based on a range of topics on the Quartet, including, but not limited to:
  • The work of individual members of the Quartet (e.g. the relevance of Anscombe’s critiques of ‘modern moral philosophy’). 
  • The relations between the Quartet’s work (e.g. their shared rejections of the separation between fact and value). 
  • The ways in which the Quartet’s work manifests in contemporary moral philosophy, and lasting effects that the Quartet’s scholarship had on the discipline.
    This edition of Critique is particularly poignant due to the recent passing of Mary Midgley and will be dedicated in her memory.

    Durham is one of the institutional homes of the In Parenthesis project which has a vibrant community of student researchers and interns. For more information see www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk

    If you have any questions about the submission process, please feel to get in touch by emailing us at du.critique AT gmail.com or its editor, Sebastián Sánchez-Schilling, at sebastian.a.sanchez-schilling AT durham.ac.uk

    n.b. With some editing as submission closed. PJ

    My source:
    Philos-L "The Liverpool List"
    https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l
    https://www.facebook.com/PhilosL
    @PhilosL
    @LiverpoolPhilos

    Saturday, October 21, 2017

    WHO - Who

    individual
    |
    INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
    humanistic --------------------------------------- mechanistic
    SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
    |
    group
    Who?



    WHO!

    Saturday, March 05, 2011

    Most typical face in the world revealed (amid deep irony)

    National Geographic Magazine has revealed what the most typical human on the planet looks like.…

    There is a deep irony here (since we are talking about 'skin') in that as the global demographics flow across the decades to alter this typical face, there is a growing proportion of the population who hope that health and social care delivery is not typical and a 'composite'.

    They hope that health, nursing and social care is truly personal and individual - taking in their preferences, needs and priorities.

    Having said that though - would it be progress if everyone could expect at least to receive what is deemed a 'standard' level of basic nursing care that is in a way 'typical'?

    more to follow - more will follow - are we ready?

    Monday, August 11, 2008

    Hodges' model as background....

    H2cm provides a filter, helping learners and experts alike, to make sense of the noise and background, as Winograd and Flores (1986) explain:

    ‘… background is a pervasive and fundamental phenomenon. Background is the space of possibilities that allows us to listen to both what is spoken and what is unspoken. Meaning is created by an active listening, in which the linguistic form triggers interpretation, rather than conveying information. The background is not a set of propositions, but is our basic orientation of ‘care’ for the world.’ p.57-58.
    Source: Winograd, T., Flores, F. (1986). Understanding Computers and Cognition, Addison-Wesley.

    Thursday, July 17, 2008

    "What's in a (blog) name?"

    As regulars here will be aware I've been wondering what Hodges' model might learn from other conceptual frameworks produced around the world. ...

    When I first read the following blog title - 'World Health Care Blog'
    I thought - 'World Health Care' - now this sounds really interesting.
    Unfortunately, upon investigation the world health contextual cupboard was bare.
    I looked again at the label.
    I looked in the tin.
    I'm sorry, but from the top-down this blog proved a disappointment.
    It's not that I was expecting a paper on world health care models or frameworks.
    Don't get me wrong the business (economic, industry) world of health care is essential (reading) for those who want to stride - not step - from today into the future. Health care has been commodified for ages, for all ages. To be fair the 'subtitle' and 'about' statement makes the focus of the blog very clear. From the bottom-up there is clearly content to satisfy the ardent business-info-addict with posts and contributions from leading players.
    Maybe it's me and my digital preoccupation has regressed to hairs; but this title IS imho very misleading. How so? Well from the perspective of world health care business-industry insiders all seems well with the-ir world. Meanwhile, non-'business' visitors like this one, may spend their visit exercising ruined expectations. (If the target audience is specific then somebody had better go sort the stage and the sights: there's still a debate to had.)
    'Stuck' (and essentially 'skint') as I am here in Lancashire, UK I can't exactly throw stones. Hodges' model is a small - very tasty - fruit (when ripe!) with four (or five) kernels possessed of global - world health aspirations. We need global conceptual frameworks for health and social care and education.
    Browsing the 'World health Care Blog' and searching for 'world health' revealed posts totally unrelated to what many people would consider the real issues surrounding 'world health'. There are posts on global health funding and global health program, India, Mexico, Thailand.
    At the time of writing 'World Health Care' is not even listed as a category. Try 'poverty'...?
    Perhaps 'world health' is implied in the content, but is this sufficient given the title?
    Noting the sponsor perhaps there's a risk of confusing or conflating 'World Health Care - Congress' with 'World Health Care'?
    The World Health Care Blog is not listed on the main Corante site, so perhaps this blog is off the beaten track?
    All this makes we wonder about Google-SEO ranking and semantic web weighting? [Actually, where does (will) the weight of blog, website, and Web 2.0-3.0 application purposes and titles feature on the semantic web?]
    'Corante' may have been the world's first English language newspaper, but *global health care* comprises a multitude of languages that must be given a voice. Especially as many of those languages are threatened species (including Danish).
    There - was - an interesting brief video clip by Dr Anil Kumar
    I realise of course that many contributors and agencies at the World Health Care Blog and Congress will be greatly involved in major world-wide humanitarian and philanthropic projects. The concern is one of impressions.... Reflecting on the meaning of 'world health' and the inclusion of these term(s) might pay great dividends in terms of publicity, balance, governance, corporate and social responsibility.
    So, come on Corante if you - as blog managers - insist on this title, on this stage then pick up the theme of 'World Health Care' holistically - you know you want to.... since after all
    Corante = Enactor
    'To act (something) out, as on a stage: enacted the part of the parent.' http://www.answers.com/enactor&r=67
    Lead the way...
    All trademarks acknowledged.

    Tuesday, March 20, 2007

    What Complex Threads We Weave

    Hodges model axes and domainsTwo thoughts spring to mind when I look at h2cm's axes - INDIVIDUAL-GROUP and HUMANISTIC-MECHANISTIC. I wonder where they end and what does where mean exactly?

    These questions prompted the combination of the model's axes and the care domains into a 5th domain: the spiritual. Could there be another view of this? Is it sensible to consider that a care concept lies at certain point on the individual axis for example? How does this relate to the mechanistic axis? Maybe this asks too much of what is a model to simplify complexity? Do these axes run-off forever? Do they join up at infinity?

    Analemma image: Source Anthony AyiomamitisWhen we think of 'where' we tend to think in concrete (literally) terms. But where are you on this image?

    Although this marvellous picture of the analemma helps extend our (physical) notions of where, this photo has its limits in that it captures the view from a certain latitude (a specific context). There are others. Our Earth bound sense of place takes on S-N-E-W, but if we travel far enough ....?

    The mobius strip is an object of delight.

    Perhaps unknowingly we are all topologists...

    Happy equinox! WherEVER you are.

    (Holistic care 2 will follow - time wise having to rely on draft post bank)
    Analemma image credit: Anthony Ayiomamitis