Despite increased prominence and funding of global health initiatives, attempts to scale up health services in developing countries are failing, with serious implications for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. A new paper argues that a key first step is to get a more realistic understanding of health systems, using the lens of complex adaptive systems. [...]
Archive for the ‘Healthcare’ Category
The Complexity of Scaling Up
Posted in Accountability, Evaluation, Evolution, Healthcare, Innovation, Leadership, Malaria, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Strategy on October 3, 2011 | 4 Comments »
Results 2.0: Towards a portfolio-based approach
Posted in Accountability, Evaluation, Healthcare, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Malaria, Meetings, Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy on June 30, 2011 | 7 Comments »
The international development sector has been in a tug of war around the ‘results agenda’ for the past few months. This post explores the tensions and suggests a way to bring the sides together by focusing on the relevance and appropriateness of different approaches.* I: The Results Tug of War Development results is one of many [...]
How do you solve a problem like Malaria?
Posted in Biology, Campaigns, Evaluation, Evolution, Healthcare, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Malaria, Public Policy, Strategy, Uncategorized on January 27, 2011 | 9 Comments »
Big thanks to Alanna Shaikh and Bill Brieger for feedback and comments. Debates about malaria eradication in the aid blogosphere, along with recent scientific evidence, highlight the urgent need to improve our understanding of the complex dynamics of this terrible affliction and to use it to adapt ongoing eradication programmes. A nearly hopeless case? According [...]
Scan HIV-AIDS Globally, Reinvent Approaches Locally
Posted in Evolution, Healthcare, Innovation, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Public Policy, Strategy on December 2, 2010 | 7 Comments »
Huge thanks to Alanna Shaikh for peer review comments and edits Back in 1997, Robert Chambers argued that top-down attempts to manage complex processes of change have not worked in development aid. …Development projects can be paralysed by overloads at their centres of control…[generating] dependency, resentment, high costs, low morale and actions which cannot be sustained’ [...]
War on cancer, war on poverty
Posted in Healthcare, Innovation, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, MDGs, Public Policy, Strategy on October 7, 2010 | 1 Comment »
This weeks presentation is a 2009 TedMed talk by David Agus on the application of complexity science to cancer research. The talk focuses on the limitations of trying to understand cancer using reductionist thinking and how this limits potentially significant advances. Agus illustrates this dramatically, showing that since 1950, after more than half a century of [...]
New York Times Article on Making Sense of Complexity
Posted in Conflict and peace building, Financial crisis, Healthcare, Public Policy, Strategy, Technology, Urbanisation, Water on May 2, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Today’s New York Times Review has a nice piece on ‘making sense of complexity’ which cites the work of Brenda Zimmerman, noted complexity specialist whose work on health systems has featured on two previous Aid on the Edge posts (here and here). Here it is in full: The Great Recession and the wars in Iraq and [...]
Complexity and Healthcare: Reformer, First Change Thyself
Posted in Healthcare, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Strategy on March 26, 2010 | 1 Comment »
One of the biggest stories this week is that US President Barack Obama has signed a landmark healthcare bill into law – the largest expansion of the US federal social safety net since the 1960s. But work by leading healthcare analysts around the world would indicate that the safe passage of the bill is only the [...]
A Complexity Science Primer
Posted in Healthcare, Reports and Studies on January 5, 2010 | 3 Comments »
For all ‘Aid on the Edge’ readers wanting a straightforward, clear and above all short introduction to complexity science, your wishes have been answered with a well-written 16 page primer, adapted from Brenda Zimmerman & co’s work on health systems. It doesn’t answer all complexity-related questions, but it is certainly a very useful entry point for those starting out their [...]
