What Can Sustainability Teach Health Care?

I've been asking myself this question for a while. It seems somewhat obvious that concepts like life-cycle analysis and holistic or systemic thinking would go a long way toward breaking down overly-siloed health care.

For example, we might ask: What sorts of environmental or cultural processes or systems might be used as metaphors for healing or organization change in health care? How might biomimicry be used to improve medical records systems, patient processing, or the waiting room experience? Might practices and approaches prevalent in environmental remediation have a place in patient recovery? Indeed, innovation is now a top priority for all major health care providers in the U.S., so the opportunities for asking these kinds of questions are expanding.

But the other day a grad-school friend, Charlie Scull, forwarded this article to me, which describes how Natalie Jeremijenko at NYU is reversing this flow of knowledge by taking the familiarity of the doctor's visit and using it as a metaphor for prescribing behavioral changes that impact the environment. It's a fascinating reversal, and one that can open new platforms for thinking between the two areas of research and action.

See Jeremijenko's web site here.

Re-Imagining Cities after the Age of OIl

While visiting the Rockefeller Foundation page, I came across an intriguing exhibit that will be traveling the country soon. Pics here.

From the site:
Held from November 6 to 8, 2008, this ground–breaking symposium was organized to address the role of urban design in the face of one of the most profound and important challenges facing global society: the need to re–imagine and rethink how cities are designed and organized in a future without the plentiful and abundant oil upon which prosperous urban economies have been built.

The "Re–Imagining Cities" program spoke to the depth and diversity of the challenge with sessions on innovations in the way cities are conceived, adapted, designed, developed, and managed in a post–carbon world. The conference concluded with a manifesto on educating the next generation of urban designers and how best to equip them for the road ahead.

An accompanying exhibition showcased innovative ideas, projects, initiatives, and policies from around the world that seek to reduce emissions by changing the way we inhabit cities. Documenting the rise in oil dependency, changing development patterns, and demographic trends, the exhibition threaded prescient theories and artifacts surrounding the 1958 conference with contemporary challenges of the urban design profession. The exhibition will be on display in other locations in the coming months. Check back for future locations.