Month: July 2009

education & learningsystems science

Doing important things

on July 30, 2009

Last night I attended the closing session of the 27th annual Systems Dynamics Society conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico featuring organizational change leader Peter Senge. Although I had planned to go to the talk originally, I was getting a little drained from all the learning and non-stop activity since arriving on Saturday and thought I’d go to Santa Fe for the day. Santa Fe is beautiful and has more art galleries than any city in the U.S. (so I am told) and is also the home of the world’s premiere think tank on complexity science, the Santa Fe Institute.

However, ‘fate intervened’ and every single car was rented in the city. We also got a wicked thunderstorm in the afternoon. Somehow, things worked out to keep me in town and I am so glad I was here. The talk — a conversation really — was truly inspiring. It wasn’t because of any particular oratory that Peter or the other conversants delivered or its brilliance in delivery (although it was enjoyable to be a part of). It was how it tapped into what I might call the soul of systems thinking and modeling. Systems dynamics modeling is a pretty esoteric field to those not familiar with it. Few people jump up and down at the thought of a model being created. It feels academic, perhaps because it sometimes is.

Yet, they offer us a powerful way to converse, particularly when they are developed in a participatory way. They provide a means to help people see the bigger picture and collaborate on some of the big problems in life, the problems that we NEED to work on if our species is to survive and indeed, if many of the other species on the planet will survive. Climate change was indeed one of the big issues under discussion, not only because it is something that systems dynamics is actively involved in, but because it is one of the grand challenges that we as a society need to bring systems science to so desperately.

The bottom line is that we need to create the space to reflect in our work. That’s what I hoped this blog would achieve for me. But its something we don’t do much of, and for the young professors and students in the audience there was some real concern about how to do this when it is so rarely valued by our environments, yet ironically is one of the tools that creates more value in our work than anything.

It was a special evening and I came away with some wonderful quotes that I scribbled in my notebook that I wanted to share:

“You only have so much time on this earth. Why would you spend your days doing anything but the most important thing you can do?” — Jay Forrester

“Climate change is a symptom; how we live is the problem. If want change, we need to focus on the problem” – Peter Senge

” The gift of climate change is that we all have to work together, otherwise it is unsolvable” — Peter Senge

“It is only through reflection that we escape our history”

Indeed, some words to reflect upon.

Uncategorized

Obesity the new tobacco?

on July 29, 2009

This week the widely-cited peer-reviewed journal, Health Affairs, published a paper looking at the link between obesity and the costs to the U.S. health system. The paper, based on research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, suggests that obesity could cost the system close to $150 billion dollars in the coming years if not put in check. Obesity is a fascinating area of study for many reasons and one of them is that it elicits such visceral reactions from different groups. Like tobacco, there are sides that are considered to be ‘good’ (public health) and ‘bad’ (fast food industry) by some.

But unlike tobacco, which has a clear industry that produces its product behind it, obesity is not as clear cut. As NYU professor of public health and nutrition and well-known author Marion Nestle writes, there are other groups that are challenging the CDC data. In her recent blog post, Nestle points to groups like the American Council on Science and Health that have come out strongly against data linking obesity and health problems. Nestle raises the question about where their funding comes from. Just like tobacco has a lot of groups that it sponsors to lobby and support on behalf of policies that are friendly to it – including funding “science” to support claims.

I am not an obesity expert, but I do an increasingly large amount of my work within the food system and bring over a decade of experience in tobacco control. What I see between the two areas is looking a lot alike.

If these numbers are correct, it is most likely another sign that a major campaign is about to be declared on obsesity, just like it was with tobacco. If so (and there is lots to suggest that it is already underway), it will be interesting to see if we get the same patterns of action that we had in tobacco like:

1. Faux science groups funded by those that create the very products under scrutiny claiming that the current research is flawed;

2. On the other side, an ‘obesity’ industry that becomes empowered but also resistant to new perspectives;

3. Stigmatization of those that are obese;

4. Major systems change in the way products are regulated

These are just some of the possible options. But I think that there may be some interesting parallels to note as this moves forward.