• January 11 – March 17, 2021. No class on MLK Day and President’s Day.
• Mondays and Wednesdays 2:30-3:50pm PT on Zoom. 
• Homework due on Figma on Sundays 8pm PT.

This course will take a systems design-led approach to explore the question: How might we create the conditions to ensure health of all people? Through a critical and creative lens, students will look at health in an expanded context of culture, business, and design. Students will identify the fundamental tensions at play in individual behaviors, professional roles, and cultural norms, and turn tensions into positive change at the personal, organizational, and societal scales. The course will encourage students to integrate their personal perspectives with views of the whole system, paying particular attention to health equity and the role of creative leadership.

The structure of the course will be in equal parts research and design. Over the course of ten weeks, students will gradually expand their understanding of health from the personal to the planetary. Each week, students will use the Monday class to discuss their readings as a group and synthesize their insights collaboratively. In the Wednesday class, students will apply systems design methods to visually represent their ideas and turn their insights into action. Homework for each week will be a blend of reading and design exercises.

* Note: Reading will be completed before class on Monday. Write reading reflections for 5 out of the 8 weekly readings (max 200 words). Your choice of which 5!  

* Our Spotify playlist.

Week 1: What does health mean to you?

Health is scientific, clinical, and grounded in objective facts. It is also deeply personal, emotional, and shaped by subjective experiences. To understand how we could make our world healthier by default, we need to start from a personal place. In this class, we will reflect on our individual perspectives and visually represent this personal definition of health.

Monday - Jan 11
Lecture: First Mile Health
Discussion  

Wednesday - Jan 13
Design Activity: Based on your everyday life, create a collage or a drawing of your health neighborhood. [Systems Design Tool: Spatial Collage]

Homework

• Complete your health neighborhood.
• Complete reading for next week.

Week 2: What makes you healthy? 

Now that we have an understanding of individual experiences, how do we contextualize that within a broader system? This class gives an overview of systems design–including its history in cybernetics and human-centered design.

Monday - Jan 18
MLK Day - No Class

Wednesday - Jan 20
Discussion
Lecture: Systems Design
Design activity: map the broader set of people, products, and places extending from your health neighborhood.[Systems Design Tool: Network Mapping]

Homework

• Complete your network map.
• Complete reading for next week. 

Reading

• Jenny Davis, How Artifacts Afford, The Power and Politics of Everyday Things, Chapter 2 “A Brief History of Affordances”, MIT Press, 2020, pp 25 - 43
  
• Donella Meadows, Thinking In Systems, Chapter 1 “The Basics”, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009, pp 11-34
• McDade, T. W., & Harris, K. M. (2018). The Biosocial Approach to Human Development, Behavior, and Health Across the Life Course.
  
• Halfon, N., & Hochstein, M. (2002). Life course health development: an integrated framework for developing health, policy, and research.
  
• Susan E. Short and Stefanie Mollborn (2015) Social Determinants and Health Behaviors: Conceptual Frames and Empirical Advances.
  

Week 3: What makes people healthy? - Everyday Behaviors

This week, we’re focusing on how the routines of everyday life influence health.

Monday - Jan 25
Lecture: Everyday Behaviors
Discussion & Synthesis

Wednesday - Jan 27
Guest speaker: Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president emerita and former CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Design activity: select one behavior and identify the cause and effects influencing the behavior. 
[Systems Design Tool: Causal Loop Diagram]

Homework

• Complete your causal loop diagram.
• Complete reading for next week. 

Required Reading  

• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, Chapter 2, “Physical Activity and Health,” pp. 27-45
  
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, “Introduction,” pp. 1-6 and Chapter 1, “Key Elements of Healthy Eating Patterns,” pp. 13-36
  
• Rodriguez Espinosa, P., Chen, Y., Sun, C. et al. Exploring health and well-being in Taiwan: what we can learn from individuals’ narratives. 
  
• Dan Buettner, The Blue Zones, National Geographic; Second Edition, 2012. Chapter Seven, “Your Personal Blue Zone,” pp. 262-297; “Reflecting on the Lessons,” pp.  299-303; and one chapter on a Blue Zone (Sardinia, Okinawa, Loma Linda, Costa Rica, or Ikaria) from chapters 2-6
  

Optional References For Exploring Everyday Behaviors In Depth

• Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep. Chapter 2, “Caffeine, Jet Lag and Melatonin,” pp. 13-37; and Chapter 8, “Cancer, Heart Attacks and Shorter Life,” pp. 164-189; and Chapter 13, “iPads, Factory Whistles and Nightcaps,” pp. 265-281
  
• Florence Williams, The Nature Fix. Chapter 1, “The Biophilia Effect,” pp. 17-32; and Chapter 12, “Nature for the Rest of Us,” pp. 241-252.
  
• John Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection. Chapter 1, “Lonely in a Social World,” pp. 3-19; and Chapter 4, “Selfish Genes, Social Animals,” pp. 52-72
• Vivek Murthy, Together. Chapter 1, “Under Our Noses,” pp. 3-24; and Chapter 2, “The Evolution of Loneliness,” pp. 25-52.
  
• Satchin Panda, The Circadian Code. Chapter 1, “We Are All Shift Workers,” pp. 3-22; and Chapter 2, “How Circadian Rhythms Work: Timing Is Everything,” pp. 23-43.
  

Week 4: What makes people healthy? - Multiple Determinants of Health

This week, we’re focusing on the interconnected factors–multiple determinants—affecting people’s health.

Monday - Feb 1
Lecture: Multiple Determinants of Health
Discussion & Synthesis

Wednesday - Feb 3
Guest speaker: Brian C. Quinn, Associate Vice President, Research-Evaluation-Learning, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Design activity: formulate a systemic problem statement that contextualizes how the behavior you selected is shaped by multiple determinants of health. [Systems Design Tool: Systemic Problem Statement]

Homework

• Complete your systemic problem statement.
• Complete reading for next week. 

Reading

• County Health Rankings Model

• Dan Heath, Upstream, Chapter 1 “Moving Upstream”, Avid Reader Press, 2020, pp. 1-17
• Michael McGinnis & William Foege, “Actual Causes of Death in the United States”, JAMA
  
• Harvard Global Health Institute, The Framework, Drivers of Health Project
  
• Chrisinger, B. W., Gustafson, J. A., King, A. C., & Winter, S. J. (2019). Understanding Where We Are Well: Neighborhood-Level Social and Environmental Correlates of Well-Being in the Stanford Well for Life Study.
  

Week 5: What makes people healthy? - Evolutionary Biology & Culture

In this class, we look at health from the perspective of evolutionary biology and culture. What is the biological basis for our everyday behaviors? What actions and preferences are instinctive for humans and what aren’t? How do the forces of nature and culture help us understand the root causes of systemic problems in health?

Monday - Feb 8
Lecture: Culture of Health

Wednesday - Feb 10
Guest speaker: Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, Executive Editor, Emergence Magazine
Design activity: create an iceberg model to represent your systemic problem statement. [Systems Design Tool: Iceberg Model]

Homework

• Complete your iceberg model.
• Complete reading for next week.

Reading

• Daniel Lieberman, The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease, Chapter 7 “Progress, Mismatch and Dysevolution”, Vintage, 2014
  
• Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Chapter 2 “From Tools to Technocracy” and Chapter 3 “From Technocracy to Technopoly”, Vintage, 1993, pp 21 - 55

Optional:

• Your choice of one article from Emergence Magazine.

Week 6: What does health mean to our planet?

As Gregory Bateson wrote in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, “The unit of human survival is organism plus environment.” Our planet’s health and our species’ health are inextricably intertwined. What could we learn from progress in the climate movement to inform our work in health?

Monday - Feb 15
President’s Day - No Class

Wednesday - Feb 17
Guest speaker: Matt Scott, Manager, Storytelling & Engagement, Project Drawdown   
Design activity: based on your network map and your iceberg model, create a map of how the various stakeholders in your system could influence one another. [Systems Design Tool: Spheres of Influence ]

Homework

• Complete your spheres of influence map.
• Complete reading for next week.

Reading

• Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson, All We Can Save, “Begin”, One World Books, 2020
• Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, Prologue & Chapter 1 “‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”, PublicAffairs, 2020, pp 1-29

Week 7: What shifts are we sensing for the future?

Now that we’ve developed an understanding of health from the personal to the planetary scale, we’re ready to envision what the future might hold. This week, we’re turning the problems we identified into scenarios for possible futures.

Monday - Feb 22
Lecture: Scenario Planning 
Design activity: brainstorm a set of social or technological trends that may shift the behavior you’ve been studying. Build a 2 x 2 framework for future scenarios based on these trends. [Systems Design Tool: Scenario Planning]

Wednesday - Feb 24
Guest speaker: Patrice Martin, CEO & Cofounder, The Holding Co.
In-class workshop: Scenario Planning

Homework

• Complete your 2 x 2 framework and scenario descriptions.

Reading

• The Care System, The Holding Co.
• K-HOLE, “Youth Mode: A Report On Freedom”, 2013
• Made in the Future, IDEO & MIT Media Lab
• Pew Research Center, “What Lessons Do Americans See for Humanity in the Pandemic?”, October 8, 2020
• Garry Peterson, Graeme Cumming, Stephen Carpenter, “Scenario Planning; a Tool for Conservation in an Uncertain World”, Conservation Biology, Volume 17, No. 2, April 2003

Week 8: What changes in the system do we wish to see?

Systems change depends on connecting the personal with the political, the micro and the macro. This week, we learn to identify interventions that could change the system for the better.

Monday - March 1
Lecture: Systems Change
Discussion & Synthesis

Wednesday - March 3
Guest speaker: John Kania, Founder & Executive Director, Collective Change Lab
Lecture: Design Fiction
Design activity: identity leverage points, places where focused interventions could change the behavior of key parts of the system. Formulate a hypothesis for how this leverage point might produce change. [Systems Design Tool: Leverage Points]

Homework
Complete your leverage point hypothesis.
Write a Story from the Future that synthesizes the systemic problem statement you’ve articulated, the future scenarios you explored, and the leverage point you believe could produce the most significant change in the system.

Reading

• Kevin Slavin, “Design as Participation”, Journal of Design and Science, MIT Press
  
• John Kania, “The Water of Systems Change”, FSG
• Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology, Chapter 5 “Retooling Solidarity, Reimagining Justice”, Polity Press, 2019, pp 160 - 197
• Vice, “The Vice Guide To 2030”, 2020
  
• Choice of one article from Op-Eds from the Future, New York Times
  

Week 9: How do you wish to make a difference in the world?  

Change doesn’t happen without people. This week, we map the various types of power, identify roles that are needed to bring interventions forward and in turn, envision the roles us as individuals could play.

Monday - March 8
Lecture: Collective Power 
Discussion & Synthesis

Wednesday - March 10
Guest speaker: Solome Tibebu, Director, The Upswing Fund
Design activity: create a map of roles needed to make change successful.[System Design Tool: Success Personas]

Homework
Complete your success persona diagram.
Now that you’ve explored the whole system, now let’s bring everything you’ve learned and researched back to yourself. Write a personal manifesto for how you wish to affect change in the system.

Reading

• Deepa Iyer, Social Change Ecosystem Map, Building Movement Project, 2018
• The Critical Engineering Working Group, “The Critical Engineering Manifesto”, 2019
• Cifor, M., Garcia, P., Cowan, T.L., Rault, J., Sutherland, T., Chan, A., Rode, J., Hoffmann, A.L., Salehi, N., Nakamura, L, “Feminist Data Manifest-No”, 2019
  
• Design Justice Network, “Design Justice Network Principles”, 2018

Week 10: What does health mean to you now? 

In this final week, we’ll reflect on our experience overall, document our work as case studies for personal portfolios, and create mementos together to guide our paths forward: a personal value statement, a manifesto, and a ritual. 

Monday - March 15
Guest speaker: Tim Brown, Executive Chair, IDEO
Revisit your letters from your future self from our first class. In breakout groups, share your personal manifestos with your peers. 

Wednesday - March 17
Reflection, documentation, and memento creation.