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Common Purpose (common + purpose)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Medical Sciences	60%

Selected Abstracts

Qualitative research to make practical sense of sustainability in primary health care projects implemented by non-governmental organizations

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2004
Eric G. Sarriot
Abstract Sustainability continues to be a serious concern for Primary Health Care (PHC) interventions targeting the death of millions of children in developing countries each year. Our work with over 30 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) implementing USAID's Child Survival and Health Grants Program (CSHGP)-funded projects revealed the need for a study to develop a framework for sustainability assessment in these projects. We surveyed NGO informants and project managers through semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. This paper summarizes our study findings. The NGOs share key values about sustainability, but are skeptical about approaches perceived as disconnected from field reality. In their experience, sustainable achievements occur through the interaction of capable local stakeholders and communities. This depends strongly on enabling conditions, which NGO projects should advance. Sustainability assessment is multidimensional, value-based and embeds health within a larger sustainable development perspective. It reduces, but does not eliminate, the unpredictability of long-term outcomes. It should start with the consideration of the ,local systems' which need to develop a common purpose. Our ability to address the complexity inherent to sustainability thinking rests with the validity of the models used to design interventions. A participant, qualitative research approach helped us make sense of sustainability in NGO field practice. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Beyond evidence-based medicine: bridge-building a medicine of meaning

JOURNAL OF EVALUATION IN CLINICAL PRACTICE, Issue 2 2002
S. Buetow MA PhD
Abstract Contesting that a debate on evidence-based health care has taken place, this article charts three paths to the future: continuing avoidance of debate by proponents of evidence-based medicine (EBM); conflict, which the EBM movement courts and critics have espoused, and dialogue. The last portal allows for integration, which would end the disagreement between EBM and its critics and make a debate unnecessary. In search of integration, I sketch a bridge whose construction requires not compromise but a win, win approach. The bridge is a medicine of meaning (MOM). Consolidating multiple pillars of evidence to unify questions that are not necessarily the same for protagonists and critics of EBM, a MOM contends that the purpose or meaning of medicine is always healing and helping, and each party finds meaning in medicine by contributing to this common purpose in its own distinctive way. [source]

Global organizations and e-learning: Leveraging adult learning in different cultures

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT, Issue 6 2008
Edward P. Nathan
This article examines a number of issues regarding the leveraged use of global training within multinational organizations. Given a common purpose and using technology that may minimize cultural differences, is it possible for these organizations to overcome some of the cultural barriers to adult learning? In examining this concept, this article discusses issues of cultural differences, adult cognition, technology, developing global courseware, and measuring its impact. [source]

Friends Have All Things in Common: Utopian Property Relations

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2010
Lucy Sargisson
Utopian theory has long challenged the conventions of private property. Drawing on two case studies, this article explores utopian practices that challenge dominant property narratives. These practices range from the mundane to the profound and occur inside the domestic, economic, interpersonal and ideological structures of the cases in question. These cases are Riverside and Centrepoint Communities: two intentional communities, comprised of people who have chosen to live and work together for a common purpose, are critical of current socioeconomic (and ideological, spiritual and interpersonal) norms and who intend to create a better life for their members. [source]

Critical inquiry and knowledge translation: exploring compatibilities and tensions

NURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 3 2009
Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham PhD RN
Abstract Knowledge translation has been widely taken up as an innovative process to facilitate the uptake of research-derived knowledge into health care services. Drawing on a recent research project, we engage in a philosophic examination of how knowledge translation might serve as vehicle for the transfer of critically oriented knowledge regarding social justice, health inequities, and cultural safety into clinical practice. Through an explication of what might be considered disparate traditions (those of critical inquiry and knowledge translation), we identify compatibilities and discrepancies both within the critical tradition, and between critical inquiry and knowledge translation. The ontological and epistemological origins of the knowledge to be translated carry implications for the synthesis and translation phases of knowledge translation. In our case, the studies we synthesized were informed by various critical perspectives and hence we needed to reconcile differences that exist within the critical tradition. A review of the history of critical inquiry served to articulate the nature of these differences while identifying common purposes around which to strategically coalesce. Other challenges arise when knowledge translation and critical inquiry are brought together. Critique is one of the hallmark methods of critical inquiry and, yet, the engagement required for knowledge translation between researchers and health care administrators, practitioners, and other stakeholders makes an antagonistic stance of critique problematic. While knowledge translation offers expanded views of evidence and the complex processes of knowledge exchange, we have been alerted to the continual pull toward epistemologies and methods reminiscent of the positivist paradigm by their instrumental views of knowledge and assumptions of objectivity and political neutrality. These types of tensions have been productive for us as a research team in prompting a critical reconceptualization of knowledge translation. [source]