Seeing entrepreneurs, activists and enthusiasts descend upon
Yale’s distinguished campus would seem like just another day on campus, but
this is a bit different. The 10th Annual Unite for Site Global
Health Innovations Conference ran from Saturday to Sunday of this past weekend
and of course Batten could not be left out! This conference is entirely about
policy from EVERYWHERE. Speakers from Ghana, India, Uganda, South Africa, Peru,
Kosovo, Congo and more joined the over flowing auditoriums of do-gooders.
The conference kicked off with a speech by New York Times
journalist, Tina Rosenberg, on harnessing the power of peer pressure: a topic
that has been covered extensively by Batten psychology faculty. After beginning
with references to alcoholism and drinking, Rosenberg asked the audience “which
parents in the audience have told their children peer pressure is good. One
could have heard a pin drop save a chuckle from the upper balcony, but it is
what leaders want- to motivate people to action. Rosenberg advised the auditorium
of global public health, medical professionals and students to “abandon their public
health expertise,” but before the coup could ensue defending the professions of
all in attendance she quickly began to clarify. Abandoning the expertise learned
in school is not about forgetting the
knowledge; it is striving to remember
what motivates a non-expert in strategy development.
Peers are more credible. While experts are motivated by dire
circumstances, enormous problems, and information, the average person blocks
their discomfort out. To break through negative behaviors, research shows that
marginalizing the bad behavior does more to incentivize good behavior that any
public health message about a wide-spread problem. People want to fit in, so to
change behavior is to credibly change perceptions of a norm.
The rest of the day was a fascinating version of just that.
Any skeptic in the room would have been a minority among passionate optimist
will logically framed arguments and innovators making pitches for the next big
health advance. In the end, the most
important advice to policy makers and public health program coordinators boiled
down to the following:
- Collaborate with stakeholders, don’t “help” them.
- Always ask why, not just for numbers.
- Understand history and context before implementation.
- Involve local peers in project design and marketing.
- Don’t claim causality lightly.
- Service should drive research. Ethical arguments exist for completing research and for not conducting it.
- Never promise the moon.
- Programs are always imperfect, but improvable (if evaluated).
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