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creepingsharia · 4 years

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Biden Hires Islamic Supremacist as Islamic Influence Operations Target His Campaign

Another suit-wearing jihadi who wants to enforce the sharia in America. Don’t agree? Look at his twitter timeline.

By Matthew Edwards

“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.” – Benjamin Franklin

Nearly nineteen years after the jihadist attacks on 11 September 2001, a willful blindness within the United States Government (USG) blocks any meaningful response to the ongoing subversive and seditious activities of the global Islamic Movement and U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO). This demonstrates a systemic failure to recognize the totality of the enemy threat doctrine and its lines of effort aimed at the key pillars of American society. The decision by presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee, former U.S. Vice President Joseph R. Biden, to select Farooq A. Mitha as his senior advisor on Muslim American engagement is a case study of this enemy’s subversive capabilities and our continuing inability to recognize or counter them.

This is the first of three articles that will offer an examination during the 2020 election cycle of the activities and coordination by the USCMO, Muslim Brotherhood, and presidential candidate Biden’s senior advisor Farooq A. Mitha that illustrate the Islamic Movement’s domestic insurgency in this Nation. Understanding this domestic insurgency, followed by citizen and leadership action, will be critical to defeat this growing threat. This series will delineate the dangers during a decisive period, as the left is engaged in political warfare and strategically collaborating with the Islamic Movement through a Red-Green Axis to disrupt not only the 2020 presidential election, but future elections across the country at local, state, and federal levels.

In March 2020, Farooq Mitha, an attorney ineligible to practice in Florida due to delinquent fees with the Florida Bar Association, was interviewed and asked about his plans working for Biden to get Muslim communities to vote in key battleground states in November 2020. Mitha, an advisor for the Democratic Party, was formerly Director of Muslim Outreach for the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Mitha summarized his experience:

“I have a long track record of working within Muslim American communities, particularly on civic and political engagement…I hope that this history along with the relationships I have developed with community leaders across the country allows me to effectively reach out with the credibility that I have the best interests of our communities in mind.”

The relationships cultivated by Mitha provide investigative evidence about his nexuses to leadership within the Islamic Movement and Muslim Brotherhood and their influence operations targeting the American electoral process. These objectives include the advancement of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Civilization Jihad and process of settlement in accordance with the gradualist framework, described by the influential Brotherhood theoretician Sayyid Qutb in his seminal book Milestones in 1964.

Farooq A. Mitha is a co-founder and former executive director of Emgage USA (previously Emerge USA), where he is currently a board member. Mitha, who served in the administration of President Barack H. Obama as Special Assistant to the Director of the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Small Business Programs, has addressed the Islamic Movement during Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) events. The U.S. Department of Justice named ISNA (a Muslim Brotherhood front group) as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 USA v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development HAMAS terror funding case.

Farooq Mitha promoting Emgage Action Virginia Islamic Movement candidate Ibraheem Samirah

Mitha’s relationship with Khurrum Basir Wahid, which began prior to their creation of Emerge USA (renamed Emgage USA), is also significant due to Islamic Movement and Muslim Brotherhood connections shared by both. According to the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC, another Muslim Brotherhood front group), Wahid was Chair of the Center for Voter Advocacy, a registered 527 political organization, where Mitha was Treasurer for the Center for Advocacy – FPAC.

Wahid is also a founding Emgage USA member and serves as one of its national co-chairs. He has been a legal advisor for the national office of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), also named by the U.S. Department of Justice as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF case. CAIR is a documented HAMAS off-shoot; in 1997 the U.S. Department of State designated HAMAS a foreign terrorist organization.

CAIR Florida cites the legal work of Wahid (past CAIR Florida executive director) as an attorney who helps “travelers stuck at ports of entry by offering free legal advice.” CAIR National has continually challenged the legality of U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s travel restrictions on foreign nationals entering this Nation “from countries that failed to meet minimum baseline requirements for immigration screening and vetting.”

Emgage USA is presented by Wahid as a national nonprofit civic engagement organization with chapters across the United States in Florida, Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia that “works to empower “emerging majority” communities, with a focus on Muslim Americans, to participate more in public and community and public service. Emgage USA accomplishes this thorough the development of young people as our future leadership, development of data to provide solid metrics for future success, and development of an active and engaged voter base.”

Khurrum has played an instrumental role for fourteen years as the chair of Emgage Action and PAC, known for its “political advocacy and action committee designed to support progressive legislation and elected officials who show support for the diverse emerging majority of communities and their issues.”

Emgage USA in fact is a key member of the USCMO, the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s political umbrella group and the leading edge of the jihadist movement in North America. The fact that Farooq Mitha is a senior advisor to a U.S. presidential candidate and simultaneously sits on the board of a USCMO member organization, when the USCMO has a close jihadist alliance with the pro-HAMAS regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party, ought to be a red flag warning. In forthcoming Part Two of this series, the inner workings of the influence operations of the Islamic Movement, USCMO, and Muslim Brotherhood inside the Democratic Party and Biden campaign will be established.

Screenshot from USCMO website showing Emgage USA as one of its members

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Farooq’s got something to hide on his twitter account - other than attempting to enforce sharia on Trump appointees?

#Islam #Muslim #Sharia #jihad #Elections #Media #News #Politics #Legal #Immigration #trave

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juniperpublisherscasestudies · 3 years

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Juniper Publishers- Open Access Journal of Case Studies

Practice of Community and Clinical Pharmacy- Need for the society

Authored by Anantha Naik Nagappa

Keywords

Clinical pharmacy; Retail pharmacists; Disease prevention; Inpatient pharmacy; Satellite pharmacy; Oncology pharmac

Introduction

The definition of “retail” is the sale of goods to ultimate consumers. “Clinical pharmacy” is a health science discipline in which clinical pharmacists provide patient care that optimizes medication therapy and promotes health and disease prevention. By these definitions, the retailer is a purveyor of a product, and the clinical pharmacist is a provider of a service. Competing metrics are in play--selling more of a good versus providing more of a service. If one is evaluated on the output of prescriptions in a specified time period, the patient care component becomes secondary to the focus of the pharmacist--not an ideal situation when pharmacists are trained to be care providers.

Retail pharmacists have little direct involvement with patients, other than filling prescriptions and advising on potential side effects or complications. Clinical pharmacists require a more advanced and patient-oriented skill set. While retail pharmacists must be aware of potential adverse effects or drug interactions, clinical pharmacists must recognize the symptoms on sight. Physicians consult with clinical pharmacists on medications and dosages, exactly as they’d consult with other doctors with specialized expertise. Clinical pharmacists often compound medications to order, and typically need better compounding skills than their retail peers.

Pharmacists are known to service in the hospital as Clinical Pharmacist and Hospital Pharmacist. The Clinical Pharmacist provides the service to patients and to the fellow health care professionals like Doctors and Nurses in the matter of patient safety and efficacy of the treatment. They work in hand and hand with Doctors and Nurses in updating the patient profile in the mattes of drugs and treatments. The Hospital Pharmacist are known to engage themselves in the logistics of medicines, required in the hospitals they are supervise the inpatient pharmacy, satellite pharmacy, and oncology pharmacy etc. They are also engaging in making customized formulations for a patient along with extemporaneous medicines. They also engage in the manufacture of bulk formulations required for the hospitals. They also engage in the manufacture of IV fluids and ointments, and other simple formulations which are used for consumptions in the hospitals.

Another important role of a Pharmacist is in the area of Community and Ambulatory Pharmacy. Community and Ambulatory Pharmacy have a unique nature of providing prescription medicines and other day to day OTC medicines to the patients and health consumers they are also called as Retail Pharmacist, Chemist and Druggist and Apothecaries. Their practice is entirely different from clinical and hospital, in fact the community pharmacist very dominant in most of the developed and developing countries. They are hardcore entrepreneur who invest their money and engage themselves in the service of outpatients the community pharmacist. The competitive market working with Stakeholders, Doctors, Nurses and Regulatory authorities and Pharmaceutical industries. The Community Pharmacist full engagement involve in the multi task like developing the business having lesion with Doctors, Nurses on whom he gets prescriptions.

The prescriptions are the legal document which to address the pharmacists to provide the unique medicines to the patients. The medicines are regulated with various rules and regulations and are subject to inspections by drug regulatory authorities to come, inspect and checks for various deviations in the business protocol. The retail pharmacist is bound by rules and regulations and must have a valid license issued by the Drugs Control Department for conduct of dispensing of drugs as per the prescriptions. They are responsible for providing appropriate environment conditions in which the formulations do not get deteriorated during the shelf life of the pharmacy. All the drug formulations have a date of expiry and it is a mandatory for the pharmacist to dispense the drug against with a validity date of expiry. Some pharmacist dispenses expired medicines they are liable for the punishment under the Drugs and Cosmetics act. The Community Pharmacist has their own code of ethics which emphasizes on the commitment of the pharmacist for the benefit of the pharmacist. The retail pharmacist supposes to check the prescription and make a quick survey of active pharmaceutical ingredient for any duplication of either therapeutic activity or over dosage. Checking the dose of the patient is an important activity, checking for the adverse drug reactions, drug allergies are also important procedure while dispensing the prescription. The retail Pharmacist should also have a dialogue with the patient and identify the areas of patient counseling required by the patient. They also should make an auxiliary label, explaining the patients how the drugs are like to impact or influence on overall health and the alertness. For example, some drugs are to be known to act on alertness of the patient they are ready to drowsiness in such circumstance’s pharmacist has to give proper instructions to the patients.

In developed and developing countries the Retail Pharmacist in abroad like North America, Japan, New Zealand and Australia are highly respected by the Doctors and fellow professionals. Pharmacists also dedicate themselves to providing service to the public. They are highly professional community for the welfare of patient and health consumers. All the modern drugs carry a risk of adverse drug reactions, and a matter concern needs to be used after the theoretical estimate of risk versus benefits. If the benefits over the risk of the drugs needs to be used.

The allopathic drugs are known for the magic quick relief to the patient and make use of the allopathic medicines. Allopathic medicines carry a tag of systematic medicine, as they are developed based on scientific evaluations. Despite of these things they are very harmful, causing the considerable morbidity and mortality. The awareness of the public harmful effects of the drug is very high in the developed countries, the patients and health consumers depend upon the retails and the consumers are to advise of the pharmacist, how to protect themselves by the harmful effects of the drugs. The pharmacists are rewarded either by the government of Australia, New Zealand, and United States of America. Government is very keen to control the ill effects of the drugs by its widespread promotion and sales of the prescription medicines to the patient and health consumers, as the sole source of the income on the volume of income to the margin after sales of the income. The market is the product centric, all the stakeholders are engaged in pushing more and more drugs and making patients to believe one can achieve the 100% health this kind of tendency are very much harmful for the health of the public and health consumers as the side effects of the Nephrotoxicity, Cardiotoxicity are going to manifest after the several years of use of indiscriminate use of medicines. Unfortunately, are serious ill effects of the drug are never counted and reported. The Government also seems to not be serious about this issue as Pharma industries successfully convinces the Government by hook or crook clever advocacy. For example, the banning of the irrational Fixed Dose Combinations (FDC) by the Government revoked by the Judiciary giving the reason for the lack of evidence caused by the drugs. All these drugs are banned in the developed countries. The ethics and norms are trade is totally absent if visiting a medical shop where the people are exchanging the prescription medicines and narcotic medicines for money without care and concern for the people who buy this medicine. This has tarnished the image of pharmacy profession and a pharmacist is never looked with respect as they are projected mainly as traders rather than a healthcare profession. Due to poor regulation of the existing laws to provide the adequate protection to the public and people is a like a mirage in the desert [1-6].

Essential Functions of Retail Pharmacist

a) Reviews prescriptions issued by the Physician, or other authorized prescriber to assure accuracy, appropriateness of medication, and determine formulas and ingredients needed.

b) Directs pharmacy workers engaged in mixing, packaging, and labeling pharmaceuticals.

c) Answers questions and provides information to pharmacy customers on drug interactions, side effects, dosage and storage of pharmaceuticals.

d) Maintains established procedures concerning quality assurance, security of controlled substances, and disposal of drugs designated as hazardous waste.

e) Enters data such as patient name, prescribed medication and cost, to maintain pharmacy files, charge system, and inventory.

f) Assays medications to determine identity, purity, and strength.

g) Instructs interns and other medical personnel on matters pertaining to the pharmacy.

h) Communicates with and treats company’s customers of various ages.

i) Participates in traditional and e-learning programs.

j) Works effectively with other company employees, managers, and departments.

k) Comply with all State and Federal Laws and Regulations.

l) Performs all job functions with Company Mission, Vision, and Goal Statements in mind.

Essential Functions of Clinical Pharmacist

a) Clinical pharmacists conduct a complete patient interview on medical history, social and family history, and history of allergy, use of OTC drugs, dietary supplements and alternative systems of medicine.

b) Clinical pharmacists perform review of drug therapy which helps to recognize and utilize relevant clinical and lab data to identify and resolve drug related problems such as duplication of therapy, drug–drug and drug–food interactions, contraindications, inappropriate dosage in terms of frequency & strength, lack of basic lab monitoring requirements, potential ADRs, inappropriate drug selection, drug therapy without indication or no drug order for an indication, non-adherence to medications and availability of cost effective alternatives.

c) They can assist in therapeutic decision making and the preparation of guidelines for antibiotic usage by assessing cost effectiveness.

d) Provision of unbiased, up-to-date information on any aspect of drug use is another major responsibility of a clinical Pharmacist.

e) They are capable of providing information on strength, availability of drug formulations, brand and cost.

f) They provide information regarding dosing of drugs in patients with renal or hepatic impairment function.

g) Since a clinical pharmacist have thorough knowledge about the drugs they can easily identify and notify as lookalike and sound alike drugs.

h) They can actively participate in therapeutic drug monitoring, medical camps and patient awareness programs on medication usage.

i) Therapeutic Drug Monitoring is an important part of the Clinical Pharmacists activity to monitor the patient.

j) Clinical pharmacists ensure that reconstitution, dilution, stability, storage, compatibility and administration of drugs are to be carried out appropriately.

k) They have an active participation in physician rounds in all the departments of a hospital.

l) Clinical pharmacists in pediatrics and neonatology can help in dose calculation and dosage form modification (Figure 1 & 2) (Table 1)..

Conclusion

There is an utmost need for the Government to investigate the current scenario of Retail Pharmacist practice in the country. The Retail Pharmacist should change their image from traders to profession engaging in the patient safety. International patient solidarity day emphasizes on safe medicine practices in order to protect the human life and health. The paradigm shift from product centric to patient centric health care is becoming at most necessary the health of the public dwindled due to irrational use of medicines.

To know more about Juniper Publishers please click on: https://juniperpublishers.com/manuscript-guidelines.php

For more articles in Open Access Journal of Case Studies please click on: https://juniperpublishers.com/jojcs/index.php

#JuniperPublishers #Juniper Publishers Contact #Cardio-Thoracic Surgery #Hospice and Palliative Medicine #Obstetrics and Gynaecology #Otolaryngology

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catherinedmccracken · 3 years

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February 2021 Learning Network Resources

Tuesday, March 16, 2021 @ 4PM EST

Join us for “Tools for Building Institutional Trust” with speaker Jennifer Stephens, MPH, from Essential Hospitals.

Trust in Healthcare

Sharieff GQ. Building Organizational Trust During a Pandemic. NEJM Catalyst. January 2021

“Engendering trust among physicians, staff, and patients has been paramount during the pandemic, and leadership at Scripps Health established several mechanisms for making sure that communication was regular, transparent, and attuned to the needs of the community.”

Bajaj SS, et alt. Beyond Tuskegee — Vaccine Distrust and Everyday Racism. NEJM. January 2021

“Though this recognition critically highlights the concordance between the Black population and the National Institutes of Health’s lead scientist for coronavirus vaccine research, we need more public health messaging coming directly from Black health leaders, a challenge given that only 5% of U.S. physicians are Black. Black scientists sharing their stories is paramount because they can more directly relate and speak to their communities’ needs. The NAACP study found that Black Americans were twice as likely to trust a messenger of their own racial/ethnic group than one from outside it. When trust is in short supply everywhere, we need all hands on deck to begin rebuilding trust in health care. We believe the best way to learn from the atrocities of the past is to change our present.”

Benjamins MR, et alt. Comparison of All-Cause Mortality Rates and Inequities Between Black and White Populations Across the 30 Most Populous US Cities. JAMA. January 2021

“In this study, mortality rates and inequities between Black and White populations varied substantially among the largest US cities. City leaders and other health advocates can use these types of local data on the burden of death and health inequities in their jurisdictions to increase awareness and advocacy related to racial health inequities, to guide the allocation of local resources, to monitor trends over time, and to highlight effective population health strategies.”

Recht H, et alt. Black Americans Are Getting Vaccinated at Lower Rates Than White Americans. Kaiser Health News. January 2021

“Black Americans are receiving covid vaccinations at dramatically lower rates than white Americans in the first weeks of the chaotic rollout, according to a new KHN analysis.”

Blogs, Issue Briefs, Opinion Pieces and More…

Unnecessary Surgery: When the Doctor Gambles, Who Puts Up the Stakes? Clore Law Group. January 2021

“The fundamental question for a surgeon who recommends an operation is whether the potential benefits outweigh the known risks. Surgery carries risks. We all know that. The question is how badly does the person need surgery, and what are the risks (and severity of risks) of complications that can happen? When the risk of serious complications exceed the risk of potential benefits, common sense tells us that surgery is not a wise choice. So, why do doctors still recommend and order unnecessary surgeries in this day and age?”

Are early detection and treatment always best? Harvard Health Publishing. January 2021

“The importance of early diagnosis and early treatment is clear for certain conditions. But for others, it’s oversold. The case could be made that our ability to test has outpaced our ability to interpret the results. Just because we can test for hundreds of diseases doesn’t mean we should.”

Journals

Kherad O, et alt.Physician Assessment and Feedback During Quality Circle to Reduce Low-Value Services in Outpatients: a Pre-Post Quality Improvement Study. Journal of General Internal Medicine. February 2021

“Limiting overuse in medicine is very challenging and dedicated discussion and real-time review of actionable data may help.”

Wang T, et alt. Variations in Persistent Use of Low-Value Breast Cancer Surgery. JAMA Surgery. February 2021

“Interfacility variation demonstrates a performance gap and an opportunity for formal deimplementation efforts targeting each procedure. Several facility-level characteristics were associated with differential deimplementation and performance.”

Moleman M, et alt. Toward High-Value, Cost-Conscious Care – Supporting Future Doctors to Adopt a Role as Stewards of a Sustainable Healthcare System. Taylor & Francis Online. February 2021

“Strategies to promote physician stewardship go beyond the formal curriculum and require a transformation in the informal educational system from one that almost exclusively focuses on medical discussions to one that also considers value and cost as part of medical decision-making. The HVCCC carriers propose a set of strategies and system adaptations that could aid the transformation toward a HVCCC supporting context.”

Beeber AS, et alt. Nurse Decision-making for Suspected Urinary Tract Infections in Nursing Homes: Potential Targets to Reduce Antibiotic Overuse. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. January 2021

“Interventions that help nurses take the time to deliberate over the information they receive and empower them to use the time to respond to the signs and symptoms of UTIs with appropriate symptom management strategies could potentially relieve NH resident suffering. These efforts could impact the overprescribing of antimicrobials and enhance antimicrobial stewardship for NH residents with suspected UTIs.”

Armistead LT, et alt. Integrating targeted consultant pharmacists into a new collaborative care model to reduce the risk of falls in older adults owing to the overuse of opioids and benzodiazepines. Journal of the American Pharmacists Association. January 2021

“As a result of the risks associated with opioids and benzodiazepines, health professionals have been working to decrease the use of these medications among their patients. However, tapering opioids and benzodiazepines is a time-intensive process that many providers do not feel equipped to address and one that many patients resist. The overuse of opioids and benzodiazepines in older adults, as well as the increase in fall-risk that these medications pose, is a public health concern for which practical, effective, and affordable solutions need to be developed.”

Bosserman LD, et alt. Integrating Academic and Community Cancer Care and Research through Multidisciplinary Oncology Pathways for Value-Based Care: A Review and the City of Hope Experience. PMC. January 2021

“Multidisciplinary oncology care pathways are essential components of value-based care and their payment metrics. Oncology pathways are evidence-based, standardized but personalizable care plans to guide cancer care. Pathways have been developed and studied for the major medical, surgical, radiation, and supportive oncology disciplines to support decision-making, streamline care, and optimize outcomes. Implementing multidisciplinary oncology pathways can facilitate comprehensive care plans for each cancer patient throughout their cancer journey and across large multisite delivery systems.”

Media

Why it’s so hard to cut waste in health care. The New York Times. January 2021

“One reason it is so hard to trim waste is that physicians and regulators have already eliminated so many demonstrably harmful or useless treatments. Patients are no longer offered patent medicines, routine bloodlettings or lobotomies.”

After A Year Battling COVID-19, Drug Treatments Get A Mixed Report Card. NPR. January 2021

“Drugs to treat COVID-19 are being fast-tracked for development, but the pace can’t match the astonishing speed that gave birth to the vaccines. But one year into the pandemic, there has been strong progress toward effective drug treatments, and the groundwork has been laid for drugs to kill the virus and arrest disease. If you want to see a scorecard on COVID-19 drugs, you can check out two good sources. Expert panels are constantly updating treatment guidelines for both the National Institutes of Health and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.”

The post February 2021 Learning Network Resources first appeared on Choosing Wisely.

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February 2020 Learning Network Resources

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susangkomengreaternyc · 5 years

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Key Takeaways from PNI 2019

June 25, 2019 ᐧ The CUNY Graduate Center ᐧ New York, NY

This past Tuesday, Komen Greater NYC held its third annual Patient Navigation Initiative (PNI) Conference. Over 100 patient navigators, healthcare administrators, payers, and advocacy groups filled the conference hall to discuss the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of Patient Navigation.

Komen Greater NYC Team with the Speakers

Komen Greater NYC has always championed the value of patient navigators throughout the cancer continuum. We see first-hand how critical navigators are in delivering quality care, and have been a forerunner advocating for the value of Patient Navigation. We know that Navigation works, and we know it is saving lives.

This year at PNI we stepped up by making the business case along with setting the stage for institutionalizing these vital services across the healthcare setting. We believe that increased investment in Patient Navigation can decrease the cost burden on providers while improving cancer care and trust in the healthcare system.

The conference began with opening remarks from Komen NYC CEO, Linda Tantawi who thanked all of the great sponsors who support this important work and made the day possible: The Allergan Foundation, Pfizer Oncology, W. Stewart McKeough, Aetna - a CVS Health Company, Robin Dubin Avram, and Vision RT.

Dr. Lisa Newman providing an overview on the Value of Patient Navigation

Linda was followed by our accomplished Medical Advisory Committee member Lisa Newman, MD, Chief of the Section of Breast Surgery at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Newman gave a general overview on the Value of Patient Navigation before moderating the morning sessions:

Karen Mandel, LMSW, and Yanira Padilla-Cruz from the Open Door Family Medical Center: Navigation Across the Continuum of Care

Janet Yeh, MD, and Jo Anne Jaravata, RN from NYU Langone-Brooklyn: The Importance of Patient Navigation in Building and Growing a Breast Program: Our Experience in Brooklyn, NY

Jennifer Klemp, PhD, MPH from the University of Kansas Cancer Center: Improving Quality Care and Navigation Through Metrics and Risk Stratification

Mandi Pratt-Chapman, MA from George Washington University Cancer Center: Valuing Patient Navigation for Sustainability

Dr. Newman with Dr. Yeh and Jo Anne Jaravata, RN from NYU-Langone Brooklyn. They are the recipient of Komen Greater NYC’s signature grant to implement a pilot in developing a patient navigation program.

Before we broke out for lunch, Linda introduced Lily Tang, PhD from Yale-New Haven Hospital and Vision RT to talk about Empowering Patients with Education About Their Radiation Therapy Treatment Options. Komen Greater NYC pride ourselves on staying abreast of the most current treatment options and were pleased to share information about Vision RT’s emerging technology, which is at the forefront of precision medicine, with our patient navigators.

Linda with Gerri Willis, Komen NYC Board Member, Fox Business Network Reporter and moderator of the day’s “Business Roundtable”

Dr. Donna-Marie Manasseh setting the stage for afternoon presentations

In the afternoon, the Chair of our Medical Advisory Committee, Dr. Donna-Marie Manasseh took over for Dr. Newman. Dr. Manasseh is the Director of Breast Surgery at Maimonides Breast Cancer Center. Dr. Manasseh rallied up the audience for the afternoon presentations:

Mike Ruiz de Somocurcio from Aetna - a CVS Health Company: Provider and Patient Engagement Approach

Tracy Battaglia, MD, MPH from Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health: Translating Research Into Practice: A Community-Engaged Implementation Study Across Boston

Monica Dean from the American Cancer Society: The National Navigation Roundtable: Collective Action to Advance Patient Navigation

The day was concluded with a great discussion during the “Business Roundtable.”

#patientnavigation #pni

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penelopelm-blog · 7 years

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Inbound branding requires to engage customers on an emotional level

According to David Rogers, the traditional buyer’s journey has changed: “Awareness, opinion, consideration, preference and purchase” have been supplemented by “loyalty and advocacy”.

I have to agree with Mr. Roger’s assertion: customers are fed up with constant, pushy and invasive efforts from brands to get you to see their ads at the optimal time for them to purchase. A few decades ago, people were not as aware of this. Now customers are overly aware and actually, the more a brand “pushes” its advertising into people’s life to prompt them to purchase, the less trust they gain. People today are aware that there is information asymmetries and lack of transparency especially as regard the collecting and processing of personal data- which is often used for micro-targeting purposes. That leads to a paradox for brands: how can they possibly build trust with customers if they aren’t supposed to reach out to them?

Below is just a 4min video to highlight the big changes in customer landscape over the past 20 years- not particularly in branding, but in society in general, which of course has repercussions on branding strategies and changing ways brands should interact with customers.

youtube

This paradox is what basically distinguishes outbound, traditional marketing from inbound marketing, which all firms should strive to do. Outbound marketing is the marketing that interrupts people’s lives by “pushing” an ad to them even though they didn’t ask for it, whereas inbound marketing is about being found by customers at the right moment, “pulling” them, but NEVER interrupting them.

youtube

Customers today are overwhelmed by a flood of information, advertising, and tons of supply. Brands have to fight for attention span without appearing to be pushy. Customers are hyper-fragmented, and they are less and less loyal. Given all those aspects, and what we previously said about inbound vs. outbound strategies, how can brands attract and retain customers? They are different strategies to get people to attract them to you without having to overly advertise through traditional marketing means, among which:

Engaging with customers on an emotional level

Being consistent across your brand image

Delivering free but valuable content to customers, not about the company itself, but about topics in the industry or related fields that might be of interests to their customers (blogs, newsletters, white papers, etc.)

Being the advocate of a meaningful, philanthropic cause

Whatever the strategy a brand uses to gain and retain customers, it should always keep in mind that trust is the key element, and that “trust is an asset, not a commodity”.

I’d like to develop on the first, second and fourth points written below, which are the most important to get well- because wrongly leveraged, they can do a lot of damage to a brand.

Engaging with customers on an emotional level

This topic is actually part of what I am studying for my thesis. We laid out the problem for brands to attract customers without annoying them, and then engaging with them and making them loyal. Emotions are a great way to lock in your customers. In our era, speed is the key metric: fast-food, fast-retail, speed-dating, binge watching, even speed-travelling etc. Taking a decision using reason takes time. So there is a big contradiction here. That’s why today customers mainly make decisions based on decisions, because they don’t have or take the time to really think things through. Emotions are thus the biggest lever to trigger to promote your brand.

It may seem difficult to get to trigger emotions but there are ways to do so, and test it. Emotion analytics are developing to test the emotional engagement of a brand. I will not expand on the subject, but as of today it those technologies are still limited to the lab.

But an easiest way to trigger emotion is by offering outstanding customer experiences: all the way from UX on the website or mobile page, to the in-store or live experiences, to service customer. People no longer talk about your slogan, but still talk about how they like or dislike your brands because of the memories and mental associations they have. Experiences help build those memories and positive cognitive associations- even the smallest experiences, such as the Hershey kiosk that distributes small chocolates to people that smile in front of the kiosk.

Emotionally adaptative content it also a great way to engage customers on an emotional level. Let’s take the very recent example of Bentley Motors. Bentley launched an app called The Bentley Inspirator, an interactive advertising and marketing campaign that they call a “luxury commissioning experience”. App users are guided through an immersive video that is directed and shaped directly by facial emotional reactions, which are tracked by the device’s camera. The narrative adapts in real-time, and in the end, the app comes out with a personalized car model recommendation, including specification (type of wheels, color, interior, etc.). This kind of experience with a brand creates positive emotional attachement to the brand, and is often spontaneously accompanied by word-of-mouth and or online reviews and promotion.

Building on online promotion, an interesting research was conducted in 2014 about mass emotional contagion on Facebook. The experiment conducted on 700,000 Facebook users revealed that the emotions expressed by other users influenced their own emotions: users who saw fewer positive messages or publications about a particular topic (e.g. a brand or product) were less inclined to produce positive content and more negative publications, and vice versa. This result proves how important it is for companies to focus on those positive experiences, especially since we know from the article (and from our own experience), that people continuously talk about a brand and a product online, even when not directly interacting with it- and the first place to do so is online, and it goes viral fast. On the other hand, if a brand manages to lock in really loyal customers (e.g. Apple, Nike, etc.), they are particularly valuable in those viral situations, especially in the case where their most-admired brand is under attack, because those highly-valuable customers develop a defensive reflexiveness (i.e. customers take the brand attack personally).

Being consistent across your brand image

Consumers are begging for transparency, and are looking for authenticity in a brand. To be authentic, whatever the brand image or positioning is, the brand should strive to ensure consistency : consistency across channels, consistency across ambassadors, consistency between advertising and facts, consistency towards customers, whatever their stage is in the buyer’s journey.

The key for that last point is to delight your employees. I’ve been taking inbound certifications with Hubstpot Academy (company founded by Sloanie Brian Halligan ten years from now), and he really insists on the fact that if you want to delight your customers, you first have to delight your employees. Brands should all keep that in mind: cherish your employees and you will have the highest positive returns. Investing in your employees is investing in your company’s success. Once again, the Human element is key- whether on the inside or the outside of your company.

Being consistent is necessary but not sufficient though, so brand shouldn’t rest on their laurels once they have implemented a system to stay consistent.

Look at the company Dow, with its nice slogan “The human element”. Whatever ambitious strategy and lovely slogan Dow had, the Bhopal catastrophe ruined it all: now Dow is only associated to this terrible damaging incident.

Similarly Volkswagen is a great automobile brand known for its “Deutsche Qualität” (i.e. German quality), and until very recently they enjoyed a great brand image and reputation. But the scandals about cheating on their polluting level shattered their quality image.

Being the advocate of a meaningful, philanthropic cause

Several strong brands get a lot from defending a philanthropic purpose- like Patagonia for instance. CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is burgeoning in many companies, but sometimes wrongfully. Companies pursuing a philanthropic purpose should not do so if it for a “cause-marketing” strategy, trying to “buy” borrowed interest. Such strategy can actually strongly backfire if it appears that the social purpose is not part of the core of the company but simply a means to try to appeal to more customers- it is quite cynical.

However, for brands for which a philanthropic cause is part of their core, customers are willing to pay a substantial premium for them: fair trade brands, ecologically-responsible companies, or any other sustainable way of making business - as a core- is usually very well received and supported by customers. I think they are several reasons to explain this higher willingness to pay: first I think it links to people’s wish to have more authentic experiences- so giving money to sustainable companies, i.e. companies that are trying to align as much as possible with the natural course of things, is one way to do so-, second I think people are more and more aware that they need to limit their negative impact on our planet, and people feel like they are somehow contributing to this global effort by preferring sustainable brands even at higher prices.

But in the end, meaningful purposes also link back to triggering positive emotions in customers’ mind. So in my mind, I think that for a brand to thrive, it should really focus on engaging with their customers on the emotional level- whatever the path taken to get there, but with this path being consistent with the brand’s core. Building on that, I just want to add a small critique to the brand sustainability map of the article: I don’t totally agree because I think that all the brands with emotional engagement (both top right and top left) have strong basis for growth. The way to really shift from only an emotional brand to a sustainable brand is to develop the emotional link around a strong core, not just triggering emotions outside the core of the brand.

#2017mitsloanbrandinga #professorgosline

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delhi-architect2 · 4 years

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Journal - Pascale Sablan on Architecture’s Role in Fueling Social Change

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If there’s any silver lining to the chaotic, tragic mess of 2020, it’s that deeply entrenched issues that are routinely ignored and downplayed have been brought to the fore. The two most clear examples of this are the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exposed the frailties of the American healthcare system, and the senseless murder to George Floyd, highlighting the fact that racial injustice has and continues to brutalize black people. The gravity of both of these occurrences has been exacerbated by poor leadership, complacency and most of all systemic racism, which is ingrained in every facet of American society.

The events following George Floyd’s death have embroiled America in a state of social unrest, with countless ongoing protests calling for greater accountability and major systemic changes. Everyone, from individuals to entire industries, have been placed under a microscope to see how they’ve perpetuated and benefited from the oppression of others.

While it’s easy to identify the police as a major agent of systemic racism, it’s much harder to do so for entities that act on a much more subtle level. This is dangerous. When it comes to the architectural profession, it’s difficult to immediately recognize its place within today’s social climate. However, it is not exempt and, in fact, its role in fueling racial injustice is quite large. To better understand the role architecture plays in framing American society, and the ways in which the industry can fuel the advancement of people of color, we spoke with architect and mentor Pascale Sablan.

Pascale Sablan, image via AIA

Pascale Sablan is only the 315th living black, female architect to receive licensure in the United States. She is a senior associate at New York-based firm, S9Architecture. With a career spanning more than a decade, Sablan’s work includes a number of commercial, cultural and residential projects across the U.S., Asia and the Middle East. Pascale Sablan’s accolades include the AIA New York/Center for Architecture Emerging Professional Award in 2014, National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) member of the year in 2015, and the 2018 AIA Young Architects Award.

On top of this, Pascale Sablan is also the founder and executive director of an organization called Beyond the Built Environment, which aims to address inequality by creating platforms and greater visibility for women and diverse designers. Pascale Sablan’s work and achievements go on, and they’re incredibly pertinent to the current state of the world. Read below, in her words, the way we can design a better future.

Nathaniel Bahadursingh: How do you think architecture is situated within issues of social injustice?

Pascale Sablan: Our role as architects is to listen, to hear, and to feel the cries and what is being demanded by the communities for these injustices, and serve as a resource for not just wealthy clients, but for the greater public. Our charge is making sure the world is more equitable and just. So really, our approach is not to assume that we are leaders here, because for us to be leaders would mean that we’d be highly educated and understand the process and the dynamics of a suppressive infrastructure well. These are expertise we do not have.

Therefore, this is a moment for us as architects and designers to pause our thoughts and listen to what is being said, do research in terms of the injustice, work collaboratively with the community to get those answers, and find a solution together.

SAY IT LOUD – New York, View of Exhibition, Curator Pascale Sablan, Designer Manuel Miranda; image © Cameron Blaylock

In your opinion, what are some immediate actions that firms and educational institutions can take to initiate change in this critical moment?

First, I think putting out statements is important. It’s critical that all designers and architects participate in this conversation and make actionable items in these statements. Remove the pressure that the statement must solve everything in one statement. It should be two, three, four, five statements. It’s an ongoing conversation on a very complex issue that we are all trying to solve, and that’s going to take time; it’s going to take dialogue. So, I think putting out actionable statements is important, and I think putting actual dates and metrics of success for measurement and accountability is equally important.

As the founder and executive director of Beyond the Built Environment, I’ve put out my statement for dismantling injustice that basically launches three major initiatives. The first is called SAY IT WITH – MEdia. The idea and root of this initiative is to have publications take a commitment to tracking and increasing the content of diverse designers in their publication by 5% annually until 15% at a minimum is reached, whether that be print, digital, or broadcast. This is about removing the entire burden and onus of us to elevate our identities and distribute this commitment with media outlets. This pledge by publications works in tandem with elevating the stories of under-represented groups, researching the history of women and diverse designers, and tracking, maintaining and publishing our progress of increasing women and BIPOC representation of those featured in their publication.

The second initiative is the SAY IT LOUD – Now Exhibition. SAY IT LOUD is part of a traveling activation exhibition series that elevates local diverse designers, where we’ve produced and curated 15 exhibitions that have successfully elevated the contributions of 250 great diverse designers. The goal of this initiative is to double our library to the number of 500 profiles of diverse designers, not just in the US, but all over the world. We have a call for submissions and September 1st is the deadline. We are seeking diverse (Black, Indigenous, People of Color and women of any ethnicity) designers (architects, interiors, landscape, planners, environmental, engineers, students, and artists) that have an impact on our built environment to submit their work. The biggest challenge is convincing diverse designers that they are worthy of praise and elevation.

The third initiative is Data to Define Policy. As a designer and an architect, I’m a huge advocate that throughout the design process, we need to engage the community and ask them the questions that cultivate an understanding of what they need. The same is true with the advocacy process. As leaders, board members and people of power work to create policy that will help solve some of these issues, the first thing we must do is ground the work. To make our efforts relevant and effective, we must communicate and have conversations with the oppressed communities that we are fighting for in order to understand their unique stories and needs.

Therefore, after we’ve reached our goal of 500 new profiles and having a database and network of 500 diverse designers, we’ll pair up with Remesh, a live communications software that will allow us to have discussions about injustice, where they’re receiving it, and how they’re dealing with it. That will allow us to identify institutions and key characters that are pushing those oppressive agendas and find ways of dismantling them.

In a time that feels clouded with performative gestures, how can the architecture industry ensure sustained, meaningful change?

I want to echo the previous point that we must not just put a statement in camaraderie and solidarity, but to actually put action items. It’s not enough to show up to a funeral and your condolences; it’s to bring the lasagna too. How are you contributing to dismantling the system that brings pain, injustice and oppression? How are you going to leverage your position, work and power to fight to eradicate racism from our profession, our built environment and in society as a whole? Then it’s not a gesture; it’s a plan of action.

When it comes to the advancement of Black people in architecture, what does individual advocacy look like? What responsibility lies on the individual architect?

Well, many architects tend to look towards their employer or their firm leaders or even organization leaders to give us direction. We are frozen while we wait for those in charge to define how to change our industry, to make meaningful changes, how to be proactive, and how to be effective in the work. Unfortunately, the reality is that not all firms will take any positions on the matter that is gripping the heart of our society. It’s incredibly important for us as individuals to feel empowered to make a difference, to make a change, and to work towards justice with or without our firms.

Through volunteering with organizations such as NOMA, the National Organization of Minority Architects, or other similar organizations that have always been advocating for justice in both the built environment and in the profession, we can find the leadership we are seeking from our firm and industry leaders, and push for immediate action.

However, I would also like to offer that advocacy work can and should start on your block, in your neighborhood, in your community. See what injustices are impacting your town, and take that as a beginning standpoint. Once you’ve identified the community’s specific oppressions, whether that be architectural or other, you should reach out to the community leaders and get more information, understand the politics of the issue, understand the institutions, and the characters that perpetuate the injustice. Together with that deeper level of understanding, ask how you can get involved. Let’s make the fight for justice personal; bring it home to your family, your neighbor, your block and your community, and make them better and more just.

SAY IT LOUD – United Nations Worldwide, United Nations Information Centre New Delhi, Curator Pascale Sablan; image © United Nations Information Center

What do you think the barriers are to finding greater representation in architecture and design?

The answer to this question led me to my first dismantling injustice initiative, SAY IT WITH – MEdia, which is really to stop trying to put the onus on us to elevate ourselves, but also having publications and awards juries to seek out our information as well and to elevate us. To cease the practice of only elevating one designer of color or one woman design and make them the end-all-be-all to showing diversity in the profession. The publications must dismantle that barrier and really work to elevate the plethora of us that exist. I think about the young students that we mentor who go home and Google “great architects”, a search that yields 50 faces and names. One is a woman, nine are people of color, and zero are African-American.

The list of 50 ranges from contemporary all the way down to when architects were Ninja turtles, like Michelangelo and Rafael. I visited Google’s headquarters and spoke with their team, and asked them why was this the outcome of the search. Their statement was “Pascale, there’s not enough content on the web that actually specifically calls you all as great.” Understanding that, I launched the Great Diverse Designers Library, where we are identifying and profiling these designers as great.

We showcase their work, their bio and headshots, their journeys and their proudest achievements. It’s a way to avoid these superficial articles / lists that just gives us 2 or 10 or 15 or random numbers of people to be aware of without showing their impact to the built environment. This library, which is composed of all the information we gather from our various SAY IT LOUD Exhibition, is now serving as a business development directory for people to be able to find and identify local talents in their region. Being able to hire them to do work serves as a way of creating more content that call us great!

SAY IT LOUD – United Nations Worldwide, United Nations Information Center Bujumbura, Curator Pascale Sablan; image © United Nations Information Center

How would the built environment look different if more black voices were in power in architecture and design industries?

I don’t want to make the assumption that just because one is Black or Latino or Asian that they’re only going to work in their own communities, because historically that hasn’t been the case. But, the idea is by creating a more just and equitable profession in the built environment, you will then be creating diversity and inclusion. J.E. = D.I. The way that the built environment would look different when we eradicate racism and oppression from the world begins with the removal of poorly appointed architecture, together with the creation of reformative spaces that serve as a scaffolding of support for the community’s hopes and aspirations for the future. There isn’t a prescribed aesthetic or form of this Just world; it will be formalized once the profession accepts the task of envisioning and constructing it.

For instance, when USGBC was creating their LEED certification process, they studied the issues and developed criteria that would solve an enormous environmental crisis. The idea was that, by developing these metrics of accountability, it would make architecture more sustainable. During that process they were careful to not script or force a “green” design, instead allowing the industry to be inspired by these challenges, and to respond through their designs.

Therefore, this effort is to change architecture’s role of perpetuating racism and injustice to one that strives to eradicate it. The resulting design of that new world is left to the imaginations and talents of the architects and designers who rise to that challenge. The work starts with understanding of how racism manifests into the built environment — how it shows up in the brick and mortar — so that we can disassemble it and make sure that is not part of our design, technique and process moving forward.

Currently, Black people are fighting on a lot of fronts, from combatting structural racism to navigating a day-to-day life in white spaces. How can this burden be divided? And if so, what would that look like?

The reality is that many people of color, from Black to Indigenous architects and designers in the industry, have been carrying multiple identities and being careful about which part of their culture or identity they allow to be present in the workplace. One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that the people who are being oppressed do not take on the burden of solving it alone. Making suggestions to provide information and clarity will really allow everyone to participate in the disassembling of racism and oppression. Therefore, as employers, firm and organization leaders we must be vigilant to avoid tasking your diverse designers with the lion’s share of the work.

It is powerful and important to understand that we’re all behind this mission to ensure that racism is not part of our future as a country and as a people. Regardless of your gender and/or race, we are working towards that mission together. Although I am guilty of this as well, it is important that we do not overburden ourselves with taking on the responsibilities of solving these issues. It’s not our part, it’s not our role to take; it’s an effort that’s going to require the entire community to participate in.

However, I will say as architects, if we do not show up for this call to action — if we decide to maintain our irrelevance in the fight for civil rights — we will be left behind. This is not a fad. This is not a trend. This is not going to go away. Justice will be found in the built environment and I really hope that, as architects, we are part of the conversation and a positive force in that movement.

If not, we will be taught the same kind of lessons that ADA, the American Disability Act, taught us. People pleaded with us, the profession, with regards to making our structures and our projects more accessible, but we ignored them. We chased glossy high rise buildings that were higher than the one previous. The oppressed community responded by going to city hall and literally climbing the stairs on their forearms and elbows to show visually and figuratively how the built environment has failed them. Now it is law, rightfully so, and all new construction projects must be accessible.

The American Disability Act is one of the most powerful and most inspiring moments of protest and advocacy. It shows us as architects that in order to maintain relevance, we must be a positive force towards justice. We need to hear, listen to the cries of those who are oppressed, and if we do not show up in a meaningful way, the community will find another way to reach the justice that they deserve.

If you are a diverse designer, submit your profile for the SAY IT LOUD – NOW initiative. Prizes include:

Feature in the SAY IT LOUD – NOW Virtual Exhibition

Inclusion in the Great Diverse Designers Library

Name, business or work promoted in publications, on websites and social media

Per your election, application will be considered for future SIL Exhibitions

Potential to be featured in the Great Diverse Designers Textbook

The deadline for submissions is September 1st 2020. Head this way to submit.

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The post Pascale Sablan on Architecture’s Role in Fueling Social Change appeared first on Journal.

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inkariasacademyworld · 4 years

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World Development Report

Background

Since, Industrialization (18th century) there is concern of joblessness among individual as machine can replace human from many routine task and ought to eliminate many low-skill jobs. However, they have created more prosperity than they have destroyed.

Technology through innovation, generates new sectors and new tasks, which provides opportunities to create new jobs, increase productivity, and deliver effective public services

Finding of the report Technology is blurring the boundaries of the firm: Using digital technologies, entrepreneurs are creating global platform–based businesses that differ from the traditional production process in which inputs are provided at one end and output delivered at the other.

Technology reshaping the skills: There is an increasing demand for three types of skills i.e advanced cognitive skills such as complex problem-solving, socio-behavioral skills such as teamwork, and skill combinations that are predictive of adaptability such as reasoning and self-efficacy.

Change in Nature of Employment: There is a shift in employment from manufacturing to services in high income countries while in some developing countries, it’s increasing in manufacturing sector.

High Informality in developing countries: A large number of workers remain in low-productivity jobs, often in informal sector firms whose access to technology is poor.

Societal Crisis: Inequality of opportunity or a mismatch between available jobs and skills, can lead to migration or societal fragmentation. eg: Europe Refugee Crisis etc.

Inefficient Social Security Structure of Developing Countries: It found that systems that depend on contributions from employers and employees, to finance old-age security, are not a good fit for developing countries.

Tax Evasion: Digital economy is making it easier for corporations to avoid taxation, as it’s easier to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions.

Suggestion in report to Improve Human Capital Improving Social Investment: Investing in human capital, particularly early childhood education, to develop high-order cognitive and socio-behavioral skills in addition to foundational skills.

Enhancing social protection: A guaranteed social minimum (Universal basic income) and strengthened social insurance, complemented by reforms in labor market rules in some emerging economies is must for developing a just and equitable society.

Creating fiscal space for public financing of human capital development and social protection by imposing property taxes in large cities, excise taxes on sugaror tobacco, carbon taxes etc to increase a government’s revenue.

Optimizing taxation policy and improving tax administration to increase revenue by eliminating the tax avoidance techniques used by firms to increase their profits.

Developing countries: They will need to take rapid action to ensure they can compete in the economy of the future and harness the benefits of technological disruptions.

Human Capital Index About HCI

The HCI measures the amount of human capital that a child born today can expect to attain by age 18. It conveys the productivity of the next generation of workers compared to a benchmark of complete education and full health.

HCI is part of the World Development Report (WDR). As part of this report, the World Bank has launched a Human Capital Project (HCP).

Human Capital Project (HCP): A program of advocacy, measurement, and analytical work to raise awareness and increase demand for interventions to build human capital. The HCP has three components:

Cross-country metric—the Human Capital Index (HCI).

Program of measurement and research to inform policy action.

Program of support for country strategies to accelerate investment in human capital.

Finding Global Performance: Singapore topped the list while, India was placed at 115th position out of 157 countries, lower than neighboring Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

State Of Human Capital In India

Human Capital Index: A child born in India today will be 44 % as productive when she grows up as she could be if she enjoyed complete education and full health.

Probability of Survival to Age 5: 96 out of 100 children born in India survive to age 5.

Expected Years of School: In India, a child who starts school at age 4 can expect to complete 10.2 years of school by her 18th birthday.

Harmonized Test Scores: Students in India score 355 on a scale where 625 represents advanced attainment and 300 represents minimum attainment.

Learning-adjusted Years of School: Factoring in what children actually learn, expected years of school is only 5.8 years.

Adult Survival Rate: Across India, 83 % of 15-year olds will survive until age 60. This statistic is a proxy for the range of fatal and non-fatal health outcomes that a child born today would experience as an adult under current conditions.

Healthy Growth (Not Stunted Rate): 62 out of 100 children are not stunted. 38 out of 100 children are stunted, and so at risk of cognitive and physical limitations that can last a lifetime.

#World Development Report #indianeconomy #upscexam #upsccoaching #inkar #INKARIASACADEMY #chennai #annanagar #best ias coaching in chennai

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bluewatsons · 4 years

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Bruce Jennings, Solidarity and Care Coming of Age: New Reasons in the Politics of Social Welfare Policy, 48 Hastings Center Report S19 (2018)

Abstract

Aging brings about the ordeal of coping. Younger people also cope, but for those in old age, the ordeal is so often elegiac, forced upon the self by changing functions within the body and by the outside social world, with its many impediments to the continuity of former roles, pursuits, and self‐identities. Coping with change can be affirming, but when what is being forgone seems more valuable than what lies ahead, it is travail. For most, the coping is managed more moderately by a sense of resignation. This is especially true for those who survive into profound old age, when one is viewed as if being old is one’s essential identity and nature. We must recognize and affirm difference and change without stigmatizing or losing sight of the specific capabilities and circumstances of the individual. This is what I think the often‐used, but less often clearly defined, notion of a “person‐centered” orientation should signify.

Individuals age, but so do societies, not simply because they have a large population over age sixty‐five, but in the sense that societies as a whole are also buffeted by significant disruption in orders of meaning. Aging has a public as well as a private manifestation, a social as well as a personal embodiment, and how it is paid attention to in culture, politics, and policy makes a great difference to how aging is concretely experienced in human lives. In this essay, I explore how the moral imagination nurtured by the practices of solidarity and care—and nurturing them in turn—can come of age—and how these practices can take their rightful place in an ethically mature political culture.

[In discussions of demographic statistics on aging] there are shades of the rhetoric of immigrant fear, of the neurosis that a stable, long‐established society is on the verge of being swamped by outsiders from far away, except that these “outsiders” were born far away in time, rather than space.

—James Meek1

Essay

Aging brings about the ordeal of coping. Younger people also cope, but for those in old age, the ordeal is so often elegiac, forced upon the self by changing functions within the body and by the outside social world, with its many impediments to the continuity of former roles, pursuits, and self‐identities. Coping with change can be affirming, but when what is being forgone seems more valuable than what lies ahead, it is travail. For most, the coping is managed more moderately by a sense of resignation. This is especially true for those who survive into profound old age, when one is viewed as if being old is one’s essential identity and nature.2 We must recognize and affirm difference and change without stigmatizing or losing sight of the specific capabilities and circumstances of the individual. This is what I think the often‐used, but less often clearly defined, notion of a “person‐centered” orientation should signify. We must be wary of the danger James Meek identifies.

In this essay, I explore how the moral imagination nurtured by the practices of solidarity and care—and nurturing them in turn—can come of age—and how these practices can take their rightful place in an ethically mature political culture. Solidarity and care are not only instrumental practices providing service to others in society. They are also discursively self‐fashioning (and, I dare to hope, self‐correcting) in that, as the aims of solidarity and care are articulated publicly and their ongoing practices are observed, a momentum of political and moral support will be generated for sustainable and necessary social welfare policies in an aging society. By “support,” I don’t mean only advocacy and activism, important as those are. I mean the enabling vision needed to respond rightly to the vulnerability of persons living in profound old age. And I mean the purposive orientation necessary for inventing new kinds of service delivery and for sustaining adequate and effective social insurance financing systems. Solidarity and care are where ethics and ethos meet, where moral rights and principles and moral community as a form of life put their heads and their hearts together.

My contention is that a society needs the languages of solidarity and care if it is to support human flourishing in the last chapter of life. By “solidarity,” I mean a social relational practice based on the recognition that others have moral standing, which requires support and affirmation by the community. By “care,” I mean a social relational practice based on the recognition that others are due moral consideration or attentiveness, which should be accommodated in ways appropriate to their particular needs, vulnerability, and circumstances.3

Familiar language of charity, cooperative self‐interest, and the greatest good for the greatest number will likely be insufficient and, worse, may point us in the wrong direction as societies adapt to aging. These liberal rationales for mutual aid and social policy—which embed notions of “safety net,” “trickle down” wealth through job creation, and “trickle forward” wealth through retirement savings and investment returns—are predicated on productivity and robust economic growth. Chances are they will prove ill‐suited to defend the intra‐ and intergenerational transfers of wealth via progressive tax systems that will be required. Standing outside these rationales, solidarity and care can offer more adequate foundations for the creation and maintenance of comprehensive, universal income maintenance and long‐term care financing and delivery.

Solidarity, care, and kindred notions—such as membership and mutuality, community and concern, sympathy and symbiosis—are like whispered utterances in a half‐forgotten language surrounded by the din of shout‐outs for competitive and possessive individualism. Our dominant political and economic languages are focused on productivity above all and use a delimited political vocabulary of justification: all too often, if it can’t be counted, it doesn’t count.4 They evaluate public expenditure and policy on the scales of aggregate net social benefit using metrics that do not accommodate the profoundly old or others who must finally draw from society more than they will ever again pay into it.

Nonetheless, the whispering voices of solidarity and care can become audible and articulate, and they can redirect first our political thought and speech and then our political action. It is ironic that these voices have grown so quiet at precisely a time when, given age and other demographics, we need their counsel the most. Soon it will be too late, and a large generation will pass through the last chapter of their lives amid mounting austerity.5 When it comes to scenarios and dilemmas of adaptation—projected soft and hard landings—the challenge of an aging society is parallel in many respects to the challenge of planetary climate change.6

Social Adaptation to an Aging Society

What must be done to bring about successful social adaptation to an aging society—that is, to a society whose population contains more people over age sixty‐five than under age fifteen? A large effort is being made to address this strategic policy question. For example, the work of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on an Aging Society provides an important indication of how our assumptions, practices, and policies should be realigned.7

To achieve successful social adaptation, the focus should be on society and its institutions as a whole, looked at from a multigenerational and intergenerational perspective and not concentrated only on one age group. Consideration should be given to the structural lag in which institutions and cultural beliefs change more slowly than demographics. In understanding the particular problems of older persons, policy‐makers should adopt a life course perspective on long‐term solutions because social determinants of health operative at young ages also affect health at older ages. This insight should bring overheated notions of generational conflict up short, at least if we wish to have rising cohorts of older persons in a better health condition over time. Finally, policy‐makers should not unduly discount or overlook what is often called the “longevity dividend”—namely, the fact that having a large population of elders can be a distinctive benefit to people of all ages, if society is set up to take advantage of their ongoing talents and contributions. This again suggests a societal lifespan approach in which we think in terms of social investment across the full lifespan, taking advantage of the actualization of potential capabilities rather than focusing on the interests and needs of discrete cohorts of chronological age.

Sensible as these perspectives and recommendations are, they will be bitterly opposed and structurally hard to implement. Ideologically, the thrust of this understanding of social adaptation, like the original architecture of the welfare state after the global depression and World War II, is toward integration of social and health services financed by the contributory pooling of shared risk on a large (even society‐wide) scale. This goes directly against the grain of the currently dominant orientations of neoliberalism, libertarianism, and competitive market orthodoxy. Structurally, the implications of this integration cut across major capital sectors of for‐profit enterprise in our society—long‐term health care, housing, transportation, and real estate development. Investments and sunk costs in the fragmented system currently operating will be staunchly defended, and progressive innovations in home care, mass transit, and zoning and land‐use planning will be laborious and slow in coming. Social adaptation to aging requires that ideology and self‐interest must come into alignment. That is where normative framing and argumentation can help. Value questions are crucial if strategic plans for policy are to be feasible and sustainable politically and fiscally.

Why should I care? Why should I help? Why should I contribute to the public provision of others? Let us shift from the first‐person singular to the first‐person plural to ask, Why should we help? Better still, why shouldn’t we? As Eva Kittay reminds us, everyone is a mother’s child, and parental support is essential to human survival.8 We all need others to stand up for us and others to attend to us both in childhood and in later life. Such solidarity and care are not front‐loaded in the life span, but spread out. They are not scarce material resources, but fecund meanings and messages. Solidarity and care are plenitudinous, like Mercury’s pitcher in ancient myth recounted by Ovid or the jars of wine recounted in the Gospel of John at the wedding at Cana; the more that is given, the more there is to give.9

From Organic Brotherhood to Productive Otherhood

Why should we care? One traditional answer to this question is the duty and virtue of charity. Persons in need should be helped by others who can help. A sense of the organic moral unity of a society has long sustained charitable welfare systems. Yet charity is not blind or wholly forgiving; its moral force as a duty is ordinarily tied to the notion of personal desert, or “care worthiness,” as one might say. Individuals are deserving if their difficulty stems from something outside their control or through no fault of their own. Another aspect of desert in this regard is potential to benefit from the assistance. Charity ought to be rehabilitative rather than dependency perpetuating.10 Charitable assistance today may put the individual back on the road to recovery and self‐sufficiency tomorrow. Charity not only sustains human survival and relief of suffering; it also can improve a person’s life and flourishing over the longer term. Teach a man to fish and feed himself rather than feeding him fish.

In the nineteenth century, as organic notions of society and duty were being reinterpreted in individualistic and contractual terms, a more impersonal and collective notion of the rationale for public welfare assistance came to the fore.11 This transformation provided what still remains the dominant justification for the liberal welfare state.12 Utilitarianism and welfarist liberalism aim to increase aggregate well‐being across the population as a whole. If rules and systems of mutual aid do in fact lead to more productive lives—more efficient uses of human talents and the avoidance of wasted lives that can be redeemed—then this is too important to leave to the vagaries of charitable virtue and voluntary philanthropy. Social welfare services are the responsibility of those institutions best equipped to deliver them. Historically, the private sector has not risen to this occasion. Instead, this vital public function has been assumed by governmental institutions, which can make social investments the private market won’t, and which, through law and taxation, can command the necessary resources.

Indeed, universal health care access, where it has been implemented, has enjoyed a collective justification—namely, providing a healthy workforce and military in service of the economic prosperity and national security of the state. This approach puts health maintenance for older persons in the bardo; it is mostly not justified on its own terms, but as something necessary to facilitate the productive activities of those younger. (Indeed, lack of social insurance for long‐term care remains a significant drag on the economy today, a fact used by those who advocate for a better system.13)

The Ligaments of the Liberal Welfare State

Something like this transition informed the history of the welfare state in the twentieth century. The organizing principle of the architecture of the welfare state is the relationship between individuals (or nuclear families) and the labor market. Education for future workers, income support for disabled workers and for unemployed workers during times of economic downturn, and income maintenance for retired workers (and nonworking married women and mothers) are the main pillars. In addition, the financial solvency of social insurance relies on economic management for increasing productivity and growth and on universal health care to sustain the conditions of effective employment. The final prerequisite for the success of the welfare state is public understanding of the interdependence of these aspects of the system. A sense of the common good is needed to sustain political support for the government as it pursues its new coordinating and planning responsibilities.

Mid‐century social policy‐making in Britain provides an instructive illustration.14 In 1948, the Labour government enacted a comprehensive social insurance system “from cradle to grave” that had been proposed by a commission led by William Beveridge a few years earlier. The British reforms set a pattern for all subsequent welfare states: they not only increased the scope of governmental responsibility for those in need—by combining income‐supporting pensions with universal health insurance and child support—but they also required more active and intentional fiscal management of the economy as a whole by the government. The fiscal solvency of the welfare system required taming the vagaries of the labor and consumer markets. Keynesian economics provided intellectual support for this postdepression and postwar mindset. Social policy historian Susan Pedersen reflects on this: “Building a universal welfare state is never simply a matter of enacting specific programmes to meet specific social needs; it requires a prior commitment to economic management and a tolerance for state control of significant aspects of public life. Social democratic welfare states, in other words, rest on social democratic structures and values. They require that society be seen as an organic whole, its members interdependent and solidaristic, subject to predictable processes or laws, and hence alterable (or, as Beveridge would see it, ‘improvable’), through social programs and interventions.”15

The Story Solidarity and Care Tell

In the United States today, we have a well‐established story about preventive medicine, acute care, and rehabilitation. This is a narrative of rescue and prevention, cure and rehabilitation, longer living through technology. Public health sanitation measures have been effective; infectious disease and traumatic death have given ground. The case for universal acute‐care health insurance coverage that is comprehensive and affordable is compelling to a large majority.16 Yet the longevity that public health and acute‐care medicine have made possible poses problems that don’t lend themselves to the magic bullet solutions—antibiotics, cardiac catheterization—that are at the center of the narrative of rescue, cure, and restoration of the patient to a socially productive quality of life. Progressive, manageable, but incurable chronic illness is the main health problem now.

We need, but do not have, an equally compelling story about investing in the flourishing of elders generally and in building a just system of long‐term care for people who are old and those with chronic illness. As Meek notes, those in “profound old age … will quite possibly be frail, probably carrying around a bouquet of chronic ailments, in many cases in a relationship of deep dependency.”17 There is no rescue but there can be respite: relief from pain, suffering, fear, or despair; maintaining a sense of efficacy and self‐determination with some assistance with daily living; enjoying the stimulation of social contact and friendship. At the center of this narrative are carrying on and opening out—being rescued, so to speak, from closing in and isolation. Economic productivity, the way it is defined and measured, is absent from the portfolio of social worth in profound old age. The task is to find a way to value positively what remains in that portfolio and to honor dependent persons in a culture beguiled by independence. We need to articulate the moral values associated with gratitude and fidelity; human presence, witness, and nonabandonment; solidarity and attentiveness in the face of limitation, loss, and suffering.

One of the best illustrations of this vision, with a number of concrete institutional and policy specifications attached, is Joanne Lynn’s admirable discussion of the multiple needs of persons living with serious frailty in profound old age, often age ninety and above.18 Lynn notes that this population is increasing significantly and can be expected to continue to do so. Her starting point is community‐based comprehensive care and service planning for individuals. “The most missing element in care for frail elders,” she points out, “has to be a thoughtful, negotiated care plan. What we usually have instead is a set of diagnoses, medications, and treatments that respond to some current symptoms or concerns, and perhaps an uncoordinated assortment of social and supportive services from different sources—none of which reflects a consideration of the priorities and possibilities for this elderly person and his or her family.”19

Lynn provides a rationale for—and describes the possible structure and financing of—a community‐based model of integrated health and social services, nutritional support, housing, and transportation support for persons needing substantial help with activities of daily living. The model, called MediCaring Communities, is based on a narrative that extols clinical coordination and social planning rather than denigrating them, as the neoliberal political narrative often does, but that also addresses legitimate concerns about bureaucratic, impersonal, and overbearing service delivery. MediCaring Communities are designed to create care plans around the health needs and living situation of the older person and the person’s family, engaging their participation, respecting their choices and priorities, and mobilizing coordinated efforts by many existing community groups. Strong evidence supports each component of this new mode of social and health service delivery and financing, but its real strength—and its prospects for actual implementation—lie in the symbiosis among these components. It also looks to the ethical commitment and resilience of local communities as the fount from which they can mobilize civic support and sentiment for aging‐in‐place values and respect for the dignity of the population living with frailty. The overall goal is to enable elders and their families to continue to shape their life course with the help of interdisciplinary teams.

The new narrative animating efforts to redesign health and social policy, like MediCaring and many others, will be about the appropriate and just recognition of moral standing and moral “considerability”—respect for membership in the moral community through acceptance of vulnerability and provision of care. It will be an answering response to the voice of individualistic self‐interest that is now so powerful.20 That voice says, “I am young and healthy. Why should I pay for comprehensive health insurance just to do my part as a member of a large pool of shared health risk? Let everyone protect themselves in their own way. Let me pay less for catastrophic coverage only. That is a chance I am willing to take. My right to determine the way risk and resources are spread across my own life span should trump my duty to subsidize the care of strangers simply because they are my fellow human beings.”

This is not merely the expression of an ideological attitude; it is also the manifestation of a highly inegalitarian and stratified society. Some oppose universally mandated comprehensive health coverage because they consider it an infringement on their liberty; others because, even with subsidies, they feel they can’t afford it.

What is missing from this voice is clear. There is only a narrow circle of commitment or obligation pushing in this mentality, and little motivational pull of mutual recognition and resemblance. It bespeaks blocked intellectual and emotional access to a kind of sharing that produces plenitude for each member rather than inevitable scarcity for some. As long as the non‐old see the conditions that enable flourishing (the realization of still potential capabilities) among the old as something that diminishes their own flourishing, we have not broken out of the liberal social contract of welfare for productivity, or its master narrative. We have not yet grasped the central point of the practices of solidarity and care.

The Postures and Practices of Solidarity and Care

What the recipients of solidarity need and the agents of solidarity provide is affirmation. What the recipients of care need and the agents of care provide is attention. Affirmation of and attention to others build on senses of historical memory and tradition. They honor the service and contributions that others have made to one’s way of life in the past. And they nurture the moral imagination to foresee the value that the lives of others—able bodied or not—possess now and in the future. Solidaristically acknowledging and carefully paying attention to the moral standing of each person are two sides of the same moral and political coin.

I take the fundamental posture of solidarity to be standing up beside another, thereby signaling publicly one’s recognition of that person’s (or group’s) moral standing. In addition, there are three distinct postures that agents who practice solidarity assume toward others whose moral standing is in need of defense. The first is standing up for—a protective advocacy that requires little empathy and may be paternalistic. The second and third are standing up with and standing up as—kinds of relationships that bring the self‐understandings of people closer together in a way that promotes rather than erases diversity and distinctiveness.21

I take the fundamental posture of the practice of care to be paying attention to. Just as recognition of the moral standing of the other comes through the solidaristic posture of standing up beside, so too recognition that the other deserves moral consideration comes through the directed gaze of attentive care. There are also three distinct postures that those who practice care assume toward others who require moral attention. The first is attentive rehabilitation, which, like standing‐up‐for solidarity, is primarily functionally oriented and can be overbearing. The second and third are attentive companionship and attentive commitment, each of which move the care provider and care recipient (if possible) closer together in shared understanding.22

The presence of physical or psychological impairment is not primarily what calls forth the duty to care, although it is often the trigger for an intensified focus of attention and the commencement of new caring relationships and services. The moral raison d’être of paying attention to is the evil of invisibility, disregard, and abandonment. The need for care is indeed universal, both biologically and culturally, because it responds to vulnerability, suffering, and mortality. However, being erased and deserted, reduced to bare self‐reliance, having to fend for oneself alone—these conditions are neither universal nor inevitable. They are potentials in the human condition that the practice of care was morally and culturally invented to prevent. And failure to do so not only diminishes the humanity of those who did not receive care but also diminishes those who failed to give it.

To move into a mode of attentive companionship and commitment in the care process is clearly a step beyond rehabilitation. I suggest that it is gratitude that prompts—or, better, germinates—such a step. It may be the gratitude felt for the newly arrived life of an infant, with the realization of how vital the assurance of nonabandonment will be to the flourishing of the child. It may be intergenerational gratitude that is reciprocal, as when adult children alter their own lives and priorities to assure companionship to an ailing or lonely parent. It may be a sense of obligation or debt based on remembering the constructive activities of the other, which indirectly has been of significant social and individual benefit to the attentive companion.

Let us adapt to an aging society by developing an ecology of solidarity and care. Let us create a cultural ethos and an institutional framework that promotes and supports practices of solidarity recognition and care attentiveness, not only in the household and family but also in the public sphere and the civil society. To do these things, we must link practices of solidarity and care to forms of democratic political reform to make society more just, equitable, and conducive to health and well‐being across the entire life span and all life lotteries. Within the broader political economy and social welfare policy of a nation, standing up beside one another—civic solidarity—and paying careful attention to one another in our households and polities—civic care—can reinforce one another.

Footnotes

J. Meek, “ End of an Idea,” London Review of Books 40, no. 7 (2018): 17– 30, at 18.Google Scholar

Indispensable for reflection along these lines is H. Small, The Long Life ( New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007).Google Scholar

I use moral consideration as a parallel concept with moral standing. Consideration cuts across the affirmation of solidarity and the attentiveness of care. Consideration does not purport to identify moral interests that are absolute, but it does imply that a being (human or nonhuman) should be presumed to have potential moral interests that should be given regard, as do ecosystems that have functional prerequisites for resilience that should be taken into consideration and respected. See K. E. Goodpaster, “ On Being Morally Considerable,” Journal of Philosophy 75, no. 6 (1978): 308– 325.CrossrefWeb of Science®Google Scholar

On this point, with special attention to policy assessment tools such as cost‐benefit and risk‐benefit analysis, see D. A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental Law and the Search for Objectivity ( New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).CrossrefGoogle Scholar

Global trade and floating currency exchange rates have undermined the ability of individual nation states to engage in the economic management that the liberal welfare state requires. This undermines democratic governance as such and may thus pose a challenge for the emphasis I am placing on the progressive political consequences of a cultural reorientation toward solidarity. This is playing out in both the member countries of the European Union and in the United States. For an interesting perspective from the former finance minister of Greece, see Y. Varoufakis, Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment ( New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2017).Google Scholar

P. Frase, Four Futures: Life after Capitalism ( London: Verso, 2016).Google Scholar

J. W. Rowe, “ Successful Aging of Societies,” Daedalus 144, no. 2 (2015): 5– 12. The following discussion of some appropriate themes and orientations for aging and social policy draws upon this work.CrossrefWeb of Science®Google Scholar

E. F. Kittay, Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency ( New York: Routledge, 1999);Google Scholar

Ovid, Metamorphosis, book VIII. Jupiter and Mercury (Zeus and Hermes), disguised as travelers, are turned away by many on the road but finally encounter an elderly couple, Baucis and Philemon, who give them hospitality. As they dine, Baucis wonders why his pitcher is not getting empty, and when he looks inside it, he sees it refilling itself.Google Scholar

C. Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 ( New York: Basic Books, 1984).Google Scholar

J. Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014): 167– 240; 673–709. A variant of the historical schema I have in mind is presented by Michel Foucault in a number of books and lectures. See The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1919 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Foucault’s theory of biopolitics has important implications for aging policy in liberal democratic states, but I cannot pursue them in this essay.Google Scholar

See R. E. Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); R. E. Goodin, Reasons for Welfare: The Political Theory of the Welfare State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); and A. Gutmann, ed., Democracy and the Welfare State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

S. C. Reinhard et al., Valuing the Invaluable: Undeniable Progress, but Big Gaps Remain ( Washington, D.C.: AARP Public Policy Institute, 2015), accessed April 15, 2018, http://https://www.aarp.org/ppi/info-2015/valuing-the-invaluable-2015-update.html; D. Viola et al., “The Economic Value of Youth Caregiving in the United States,” Relational Child and Youth Care Practice 25, no. 2 (2012): 10– 13.Google Scholar

The following discussion draws on C. Renwick, Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State ( London: Allen Lane, 2017). See also G. Esping‐Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). On the history of social welfare policy in the United States, see T. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

S. Pedersen, “ One‐Man Ministry,” London Review of Books 40, no. 3 (February 8, 2018): 5.Google Scholar

Achieving this narrative for the working poor has been elusive, to be sure, and we do not yet have a compelling narrative for universal income maintenance. See P. Van Parijs and Y. Vanderborght, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University press, 2017).CrossrefGoogle Scholar

Meek, “ End of an Idea,” 18.Google Scholar

J. Lynn, Medicaring Communities: Getting What We Want and Need in Frail Old Age at an Affordable Cost ( Washington, D.C.: Altarum Institute, 2016).Google Scholar

Ibid., 22.Google Scholar

See S. R. Levitsky, Caring for Our Own: Why There Is No Political Demand for New American Social Welfare Rights ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).CrossrefGoogle Scholar

Portions of this discussion draw on B. Jennings and A. Dawson, “ Solidarity in the Moral Imagination of Bioethics,” Hastings Center Report 45, no. 5 (2015): 31– 38. See also K. Banting and W. Kymlicka, eds., The Strains of Commitment: The Political Sources of Solidarity in Diverse Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), and B. Prainsack and A. Buyx, Solidarity: Reflections on an Emerging Concept in Bioethics (London: The Nuffield Council, 2011).Wiley Online LibraryPubMedWeb of Science®Google Scholar

Among the works of care theory upon which this discussion draws are V. Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Kittay, Love’s Labor; J. Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1994); and J. Tronto, Caring Democracy: Markets, Equity, and Justice (New York: New York University Press, 2013).

#aging #self-image #coping #change #identity #solidarity #care #support #ethics of care #society #collectivism #individualism #social welfare #policy

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Investing for Social Impact Is Complicated. Here Are 4 Ways to Simplify It.

Investing in companies or organizations that make a positive change on society can be a bit like indulging in a vice: A lot of people might enjoy it privately, but they’re not comfortable talking about it publicly.

When asked about this strategy, known as impact investing, investors typically give a lukewarm response or sidestep the topic altogether, researchers have found. A common refrain is to raise concerns about an investment’s influence and how any trade-offs with returns are measured.

But recent research geared toward individual investors, financial advisers and fund managers has found that impact investing is more broadly popular than advisers believed and that this may be a golden age for measuring the financial and social returns on such investments.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans have moderate to high interest in sustainable investing, according to new research by the financial services firm Morningstar. That interest, the study found, is broad and deep. It also runs contrary to a common belief among advisers that interest in this type of investing is confined to millennials and women.

The study used a technique from experimental economics called revealed preferences, said Ray Sin, a senior behavioral scientist at Morningstar who conducted the study with Ryan O. Murphy, head of decision sciences at the firm. Most surveys that study impact investing rely on stated preferences: You answer the question you’re asked. The Morningstar survey gave people either/or choices between two stocks with varying differences of the financial returns and sustainability ratings of each stock.

“You’re inferring their preferences through trade-offs,” Mr. Sin said. “In doing that, we’re able to tell how much they’re willing to trade off, and then we tied it back to the question: Do people care about sustainable investing?”

The answer, overwhelmingly, was yes. That opened up a second line of inquiry: Are the investments having an impact and still generating a solid return?

That is a difficult question to answer in a meaningful way. Many organizations offer metrics for measuring an investment’s impact, but they are generally not all measuring the same thing. The best ones, though, are at least evaluating all the investments using the same criteria.

“There’s been a pretty significant proliferation of metrics and data in the last 20 years,” said Lily Trager, director of investing with impact at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. She said that what had started as a way of avoiding risk caused by the actions of companies had evolved into a more complicated assessment of positive performance.

Yet putting that information together in a meaningful way has proved to be complicated. “You’re seeking to define the most useful of material factors,” Ms. Trager said. “That is nuanced and challenging for clients to understand.”

Here is a look at four metrics that either are being introduced or have been overhauled in an effort to simplify the process for investors.

Hoping to be a one-stop shop

The Global Impact Investing Network, a nonprofit advocacy group, has operated the IRIS rating system for the past decade. It has contributed to metrics that evaluate impact investments, with the intention of creating a commonly used method, similar to the generally accepted accounting principles used by the Securities and Exchange Commission. IRIS is set to be reintroduced this month.

The new version, IRIS+, is meant to translate impact investing goals like gender equity, climate change and affordable housing into results, said Amit Bouri, the chief executive of GIIN. He said the new system would help investors know exactly which metrics to track if they hoped, for example, to bring clean energy to rural areas.

The revised IRIS system is also an acknowledgment that impact investors want more ratings they can act on, he said.

“Before, the people doing impact investing were do-gooder organizations by design,” Mr. Bouri said. “When I fast-forward to today, and I have a conversation with the chief investment officer of an investment fund or the chief executive of an asset manager, they all want to talk about impact investing. But they want to know how they can best understand their performance.”

Mr. Bouri hopes that IRIS Plus can serve as a one-stop shop for investors seeking to understand how a particular goal can, or cannot, be accomplished through a particular investment.

Retooling ratings on an aspirational scale

The Global Impact Investment Rating System was created a decade ago to apply sustainability criteria to private investments made through venture capital and private equity funds. It was the brainchild of B Lab, a nonprofit organization that strives to redefine business success and administers the B Corporation certification.

Giirs (pronounced gears) was meant to evaluate both the investments themselves and the overall quality of the funds. It focused on the impact of a business model, the impact of a company’s policies and the intent of the fund to make an impact.

The system is now being retooled to bring it more in line with the B Corp system of rating companies themselves. That system measures a company on social and environmental metrics as they relate to its business and employees, and then assigns a score from 0 to 200 points. A company needs a score of at least 80 to receive the B Corp designation.

As Giirs has evolved, the organization’s leaders realized that investors were interested in analytical data, said Andrew Kassoy, a co-founder and the managing partner of B Lab. So impact investments will now be put through an analytical screening process and assigned a series of scores in areas like the effect on the environment or treatment of workers as well as a total score, the way companies seeking B Corp certification are scored.

Mr. Kassoy said that applying this methodology to impact investments would help them strive for constant improvement.

“The whole idea of the 200-point scale is aspirational,” he said. “It’s easy to identify things that can be done quickly and easily as well as things that would take more time with a plan for improvement. That leads to really important conversations with investors.”

Using accounting standards as a model

The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board was modeled on the Financial Accounting Standards Board with the goal of doing for sustainable investing what FASB has done for accounting.

Last fall, after seven years of work, the organization released its framework for analyzing 77 industries along a consistent range of environmental, social and governance metrics.

The group’s overarching goal is to focus on sustainability’s financial impact on a company and what that means to investors.

General financial information for most companies is available online, but the same cannot be said for a company’s approach to using environmental, social and governance measurements, said Bryan Esterly, the sustainability board’s director of standards research. Even companies that provide their own sustainability reports do not do so in a standardized way as they do with accounting measures.

“What we produce are standards,” Mr. Esterly said. “We don’t produce ratings. Our view is, the ratings could be more accurate and robust if there was a market standard out there.”

One drawback: So far, only about 60 companies have used the board’s standards.

Swapping numbers for a heat map

Erika Karp, the chief executive of Cornerstone Capital, which manages money for wealthy people, came to impact investing through equity research at top global investment banks. She said she saw environmental, social and governance analysis as a critical investment discipline, akin to quantitative or fundamental research.

But assessing an investment’s impact has been difficult to do in a way that is meaningful and understandable to the high-net-worth clients she serves. Using the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals, Cornerstone created the Access Impact Framework to apply those goals to companies in different sectors.

The end result for investors is a heat map that shows in colors from pale to deep blue how their money measures up to their goals, whether it is invested in individual companies, funds or the portfolio over all.

“We’re sorting through a lot of data and noise and getting to a signal for regular human beings — not quants, not financial experts,” Ms. Karp said.

With the heat map, clients who want to improve access to education in the world can see if their investments are actually doing that. They can also screen managers to see, for example, which ones are invested in opportunities that provide access to clean water.

Ms. Karp said the company purposely avoided using a numerical scale because she hoped the heat map would reach people on a more human level.

“It’s so easy to be bummed out when you think of the damage that’s been baked into the climate,” she said. “We really have to get going now, and if you’re going to get going now it has to be visceral. Numbers don’t let things be visceral.”

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the-counter-current-blog · 5 years

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Life as an EcoFellow: Morgan and Natasha

The Center for EcoTechnology (CET) is way ahead of its time.

In the last three short years — from 2016 to 2019 — of its 40 year establishment, the Center for EcoTechnology has made a massive impact on consumer practices. CET is projected to help approximately 95,000 people and businesses in three ways. Firstly, CET is on track to reduce carbon emissions by 391,000 metric tons. This is the equivalent of taking 85,000 cars off the road for one year! Secondly, CET has helped to keep 80,000 tons of waste out of landfills. Thirdly, CET has saved the equivalent energy of powering 35,000 homes for a year. But, best yet, they have saved $70 million (that’s right million!) in lifetime savings for both individuals and businesses by “going green”.

Change-Agents Combating Climate Change.

This non-profit organization helps both individuals and businesses to “go green” by reducing energy and waste consumption. Their website has a fantastic step-by-step guidance system that discusses renewable energy incentives that are available at the local, state, and federal levels. Often these local, state, and federal initiatives work with Solar Access and are funded by both the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and the Department of Energy Resources.

These three organizations offer credibility to the Center for EcoTechnology’s mission. Between qualification, certification, and other forms of quality controls, CET clients are assured that “going green” can be profitable for both firms and individuals. Included in profitability metrics is also the inherent good generated by thoughtful, conscientious consumerism. In terms of the financial breakdown, the Federal government provides a 30% solar tax credit and Massachusetts also provides a 10% solar tax credit. These type of sensible policies are just one of many reasons why the solar industry is growing so rapidly!

Green Practices Galore!

Not only does CET focus heavily on waste reduction, but they also provide assistance on reduction guidance and how to optimize food donations, trash collections, which construction and demolition materials to use, and other topics on waste. Just like a for-profit organization that provides business to business (B2B) services, the non-profit matches people and businesses with recycling and redemption facilities. The Center for EcoTechnology truly maximizes ways to make recycling, reusing, and waste reducing easy. In Massachusetts, they rely on a partnership with RecyclingWorks to get the job done.

We at Counter Current love to write about the environment. Even more fun than writing about the environment is the ability to feature good people who are passionate about an environmentally-focused cause. Therefore, it was an absolute no-brainer getting the chance to interview a couple of recent college graduates, Morgan Laner and Natasha Nurjadin, who have delved deep in CET’s mission through their 11 month EcoFellowship Program.

Morgan Laner

Morgan loves trash! While studying at Rollins College in Environmental Studies, she made the leap to study abroad her sophomore year in Australia. This decision is what sparked her passion about waste. While she was in Australia, Morgan attended a lecture. When she walked in and sat down, she initially thought it was just going to be like anything else — just a lecture. However, this one was different. The lecturer was enthusiastic about the material and discussed why the concepts of “zero waste” and “voluntary simplicity” matter in our society. Morgan recalled that it was at this moment when it all clicked. When Morgan returned to Rollins College, she increased her focus and became heavily involved in sustainability programs on campus. In particular, she focused her energies on reducing waste, increasing recycling practices, and she created the “plastic bag ban” at school.

Not only is Morgan an EcoFellow who focuses on Program Operations, but she also enjoys the challenge. Working at a nonprofit, the challenge she encountered was how to sell a free service. When she would cold call individuals, firms, and partake in other forms of outreach, she noticed most people aren’t used to hearing about free products. Her second love is crafting. In the EcoBuilding Bargains store, Morgan has demonstrated how waste can be diverted from landfills in creative and eco-friendly ways.

Another experience Morgan particularly enjoyed during her EcoFellowship was the opportunity to grow professionally. Such opportunities included shadowing other members of the CET team, talking with experts in fields she was interested in learning more about, and participating in a Career Day organized specifically for her and the other EcoFellows. For Morgan, she knows she wants to stay in the environmental sector and share her passion for waste reduction with others, so this opportunity was key toward reaching her future goals.

Natasha Nurjadin

Over the last 6 months, Natasha’s concern for the environment has really flourished! She credits the Center for EcoTechnology’s EcoFellowship Program as a key influence in developing her concern. Before her EcoFellowship, Natasha studied Earth & Environmental Science and History at Wesleyan University and was involved in the University Sustainability Office, accidentally. Her intent was to work in the Administration Office, but Natasha quickly shifted gears towards sustainability when a spot opened up.

Upon becoming an EcoFellow, Natasha found herself on the “Lifestyle Talk Shows” on Mass Appeal TV every Thursday morning. On the local station, Natasha had a platform to share her ideas with 1,000s of viewers. This platform exposed Natasha to become more comfortable with advocacy and public speaking. However, Natasha is still committed to finding a quantitative way through data management to provide an eco-friendly perspective to individual consumers and firms!

Natasha’s involvement on Building Science and Solar Access has led her to combining several atypical skills. In particular, she has learned how to incorporate urban planning with energy efficiency — not a practice most recent college graduates are familiar with! In the future, Natasha plans to continue her education in graduate school through an environmental program ranging from sustainability to urban planning. Her interests are expansive, but mesh together nicely!

In just half a year, these amazing women have done so much for the environment!

If you liked reading about Morgan and Natasha and want to meet more people like them, check out CET’s website! Further, if you want to be like Morgan or Natasha, then mark your calendars! The EcoFellowship Program Application is open and available until February 17. Follow them also on Twitter, @CETOnline!

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