RWL #190 - COVID-inspired innovation, Gen Z, and more
Mark Bonica, PHD
Chair, Department of Health Management and Policy, University of New Hampshire
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire - Forward Operating Base Last Homely House (FOB LHH)! The streets of Durham are alive with students again for the first time since March. I went into campus yesterday to check out my “classrooms” and students were everywhere, and nearly all wearing masks. That is both heartening, in that they are complying with the guidance put out by the administration, and sad, because it’s a reminder of how not normal life still is. Speaking of classrooms, the picture above is me in one of my “classrooms” this semester. This is actually one of two movie theaters in the student union building, and I have been assigned to teach in it. I guess the students will sit in the green tagged seats in order to be safely distanced.
So… it looks like we will be casing the UNH colors here at the Last Homely House and returning to some sort of “normal”. At least until Thanksgiving when we return to remote learning for the remainder of the semester.
Being thrust into remote learning has made me much more comfortable with the relevant technology. I’d like to think I was already pretty savvy with it, but now I feel more at home. I am teaching two career development courses this semester and relying heavily on guest speakers and panels. For those days, I’ll be running the class through Zoom so that the guests don’t have to come to campus and be masked while they try to talk. Once I made that decision, it freed me up to ask guests who were as far away as San Francisco to participate, which I think is really exciting. We’ll see how it all goes in just a couple of days!
Stay well and stay safe.
Read
What: FastCompany, GoPros, plastic sheeting, and colored tape: How one of America’s oldest hospitals adapted to COVID-19
Why: If there’s a bright side to COVID, it is that the pandemic has forced innovation along a variety of fronts. Some of that innovation is aimed at just getting back to normal. But some of it is going to create a new normal that we won’t go back from because we like it better than the old normal. Case in point is my using Zoom for guest speakers instead of bringing them to campus. This ia great article that tells about how Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City innovated in the face of the COVID threat, coming up with new and innovative ways to care for patients and staff alike. Many of the innovations won’t go away after we get COVID under control.
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What: Jezebel, When Surgeons Fail Their Trans Patients
https://jezebel.com/when-surgeons-fail-their-trans-patients-1844774990
Why: This was an educational read for me. I’ve had some conversations with providers who are trying to ensure that other providers are familiar with LGBT health issues. The reality is there are different health needs and providers need to be aware of those needs for these populations. One of the things that is interesting and revealing in this article is how medical training works and how sub-specialties evolve. It seems, based on this article, that “bottom surgery” which is the term used to refer to gender reassignment surgery on the genitalia, is something of a Wild West in medicine. It lacks a strong professional consensus on training or quality control. I imagine as there is more acceptance of transitioning the professional regulation will evolve, but it’s a thing that takes time to develop. It’s an interesting demonstration of how major medical innovations in general evolve from fringe activities by a few doctors to mainstream.
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What: Brainpickings, The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/01/seneca-on-the-shortness-of-life/
Why: If you don’t subscribe to Brainpickings, you really should. It’s an excellent … well, I’m not quite sure how to qualify it. It’s a newsletter by Maria Popova that brings together a range of thoughts from literature, philosophy, the arts, etc. She’s pretty darn brilliant. I always feel a little smarter after I read one of her pieces. In this week’s article, she highlights one of my favorite philosophers, Seneca. Here is a quote from Seneca that Maria uses in her piece:
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”
There is much more at the link. Read about Seneca, then do go get Letters from a Stoic.
Watch
What: TED, The single biggest reason why start-ups succeed | Bill Gross (6 min)
Why: Bill Gross, entrepreneur and VC, hypothesizes five factors that might cause start ups to succeed. What he finds is timing is the most important factor, followed by the team. The idea, business model, and funding were less important. This makes me think of Machiavelli who said in The Prince, “Fortune may be the arbiter of one half of our actions, but she still leaves us the other half, or perhaps a little less, to our free will.” Talent is not zero, but fortune (i.e., Timing) has a big say in success. This is a short fun talk.
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What: TEDxAstonUniversity, What Makes "Generation Z" So Different? | Harry Beard (15 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyCn3APagyU
Why: My students are no longer Millennials - they are firmly in Gen Z. 17 year old Harry Beard talks about how technology allows people of his generation to pursue their passions without an intermediary (e.g., music production). His point extends beyond cultural production, but business formation as well. All these things apply to the rest of us oldsters, too. But he argues Gen Z is being “programmed” to think differently than prior generations. “To us, it’s all natural” he says - to start their own business, charity, or chase their passion. How do we integrate young people who assume they can be entrepreneurs as easily as a few clicks?
Listen
What: a16z Podcast, On Vaccines and Vaccinology, in COVID and Beyond (56 min)
https://a16z.simplecast.com/episodes/vaccines-vaccinology-renaissance-covid-pandemic-beyond-ApeTPGED
Why: The question in everyone’s mind is when will we be able to go back to normal? And of course that boils down to finding a treatment for COVID-19 and/or preferably a vaccine. This is a wide-ranging podcast that discusses some of the science behind vaccines, and how the massive global effort is potentially going to revolutionize how we develop and manufacture vaccines. They also explain some of the challenges of manufacturing vaccines which was interesting, and they get into some of the expected social challenges of marketing the vaccine when it is finally ready. As with the Mt. Sinai story above, the COVID threat has forced us all to innovate in a war-time fashion. Some good is going to come of it. I’ve been impressed with this podcast. It’s not polished like an NPR product, but it has great information with real people.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at [email protected] , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
Also, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/markbonica
See you next Friday!
Mark