I *occasionally* allow photo friday to be a photograph not taken by me. This week’s photograph was taken by Nirav Shah, MD, MPH the Commissioner of Health for New York State. I know, we should all be so fortunate to have such a photographer 🙂
#SDOH Walking Meeting, photograph by Nirav Shah, MD, MPH View Forum for Healthy Behavior Change – healthy walking meeting through Washington, DC on Flickr.com
He said “You’re taking all the photos, there isn’t one of you.” So now there is. Here’s the one I took of the group:
We were on the morning walk with several-docs-and-business-and-clinical-leaders through Washington, DC, observing the history and the social determinants of health around us, from health in every policy to active transportation to crime, and irreplaceable loss. All in 30 minutes. That’s how awesome this city is as a lab for learning about health :).
Total Health. View on Flickr.com
I actually didn’t take that many photographs at the Forum because we had an expert photographer colleague in our midst.
The ones I took show the diversity of conversations this week, from Brenda Suits at Bank of America Foundation (@BofA_Community) talking about the Bank’s work to reduce hunger and support affordable housing (many attendees didn’t know about this), to Ideas42 (@ideas42) talking about behavior design and behavior audits in the workplace and beyond.
One of my favorites, Opower (@Opower) was also there showing off the seductive, addicting, and successful reduction of energy use in households across the United States using behavior change science. Can’t forget about the Monday Campaigns (@HealthyMonday), in the form of Peggy Neu, whose work seamlessly meshes with BJ Fogg’s (@BJfogg) work on the periodicity of behavior modification. More, much more happened, including the voice of the patient and some pretty impressive commitments for the health system to collaborate with the rest of society to design for better health.
At the conclusion of the event someone asked me what I thought of it – my response was/is “I got everything I wanted,” which is really a commitment to listen, learn, and act in a way that supports the causes of the causes and the causes of the production of health to support achievement of every human being’s life goals. That’s what the health system is here for, right? Right.
Enjoy the photos, click to enlarge.