UTEP professor leads health collaboration exercise at White House

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A User-Experience Fishbowl in Progress at the White House UTEP Professor Arvind Singhal (standing) leads from behind.

WASHINGTON — University of Texas at El Paso professor of Communication, Dr. Arvind Singhal, a practitioner of Liberating Structures processes designed an interactive, inclusive, two-day working meeting on the topic, Partners in Health: Aligning Clinical Systems, Faith and Community Assets. April 15-16, at the White House.

Some 60 leaders of hospitals and clinical care systems, faith networks, and community organizations gathered in the nation’s Executive Office to create actionable plans to increase access to health care and preventive services, promote community health and wellness, by aligning their missions, visions, and assets.

Unlike traditional approaches to designing meetings that mostly comprise of stand-up-and-deliver presentations and/or expert panels, Liberating Structures represent an alternative and complementary approach that includes and unleashes everyone, building trust and generative relationships—with emergent processes, surprising outcomes, and meaningful connections.

A 15% Solutions with Troika in Progress.   UTEP Professor Arvind Singhal watches over.

A 15% Solutions with Troika in Progress.
UTEP Professor Arvind Singhal watches over.

Organized by the White House Office of Faith based and Neighborhood Partnerships, its U.S. Department of Health and Human Services counterpart, and Stakeholder Health, a Learning Collaborative of Health Systems, the two-day meeting guided the deliberations in a narrative sequence that included:

  • Impromptu Networking set the stage for discussions, focusing on the challenges faced in collaboration and alignment of clinical systems, faith, and community assets.
  • Participants then discovered root causes of success with Appreciative Interviews and 1, 2, 4, all, shared innovations with Shift and Share (two rounds),
  • Learned and generated questions through a User Experience Fishbowl,
  • Generated actionable ideas through Crowdsourcing/25 Gets You 10, decided who needed to work with whom through Social Network Webbing,
  • And built upon those ideas with Troika and 15% Solutions, and debriefed the experience with 1, 2, 4, All.

Celebrating the success of the process, one participant said, “It was highly relational and not what I expected. These two days were unconventional and I have been continued to be blown away by the trust of the process and commitment to the process.”

Dr. Gary Gunderson of Stakeholder Health captured the significance of the meeting in his blog titled:  Trellises & White House Meeting http://stakeholderhealth.org/trellis-reflections-on-a-white-house-meeting/

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