Michael Graves, the renowned architect and designer, was hospitalized in 2003 when a sinus infection spread to his spinal cord, a very rare occurrence. He survived but was paralyzed from the chest down. As he moved among hospitals and rehabilitation centers, Graves was struck by how the patient rooms and furniture were not only ugly, but […]
Stanford Medicine X
The Other 80
Claudia Williams created The Other 80 podcast to talk about how medical care only accounts for 20% of health outcomes. The other 80% includes factors like food, housing, transportation options, social connection, etc. I was honored to be interviewed for episode #27, now available wherever you listen to podcasts. You can hear in my voice […]
Signs of the times: Black Lives Matter
Sonja Sharp, an LA Times reporter, interviewed Deaf people about how they are creating and sharing new signs for this moment of reckoning and recognition. I cued up the story’s video (below) to the point at which Rorri Burton, a Black American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter, shares her perspective: The sign for “your knee on […]
Public Q&A: conference organizing
A friend asked me to share some of my tips about how to organize a useful, comfortable, inclusive health care conference. Meeting planning is not what I do for a living, but since I attend about a dozen events each year, I’ve captured quite a few observations about how to create a great experience for […]
Artists of health care
I have found that we can anticipate the future by paying attention to artists. Like hackers, artists bend tools until they break and ask, “Why CAN’T I do that?” They push the edges of any field they find themselves in. Autodesk, which makes software for people who make things, created the Pier 9 Residency Program to […]
If we give people access to the tools they need to solve problems, they will
One of my core beliefs is that if we give people access to the data, information, and tools they need to solve their own problems, they will. The Maker movement is an example of a group of people who embody this idea. They modify and improve the world around them. They look at a problem and not only say, […]
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