Overcoming Statistics With Creative Governance

In this blog, I would like to share with you two Creative Governance practices that I sourced from Fastcompany business magazine Jan 2007 issue. One concerns health and the other on reforming criminals. Based on statistics, these two situations seem hopeless but they were overturned with Creative Governance

I believe it is time for us to explore such Creative Governance practices in resolving our outstanding social ailments. They are much more effective, with almost negligible cost and brought about lasting transformation. Isn’t it time for governments to set up teams to explore this Creative Governance approach?

Health-Care

According to Dr. Raphael "Ray" Levey, founder of the Global Medical Forum, "A relatively small percentage of the population consumes the vast majority of the health care budget for diseases that are very well known and by and large behavioral." That is, they're sick because of how they choose to lead their lives, not because of factors beyond their control, such as the genes they were born with.
Dr. Edward Miller, of Johns Hopkins University said "If you look at people after coronary- artery bypass grafting two years later, 90 % of them have not changed their lifestyle."

Knowing these grim statistics, doctors tell their patients: If you want to keep the pain from coming back, and if you don't want to have to repeat the surgery, and if you want to stop the course of your heart disease before it kills you, then you have to switch to a healthier lifestyle. You have to stop smoking, stop drinking, stop overeating, start exercising, and relieve your stress.
But very few do.

In 1993, Dr. Dean Ornish, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, convinced the Mutual of Omaha insurance company to pay for an unusual experiment. The researchers recruited 194 patients who suffered from severely clogged arteries and could have bypass grafts or angioplasties covered by their insurance plans. Instead they signed up for a trial. The staffers helped them quit smoking and switch to an extreme vegetarian diet that derived fewer than 10 percent of its calories from fat. In places like Omaha, they shifted from steaks and fries to brown rice and greens. The patients got together for group conversations twice a week, and they also took classes in meditation, relaxation, yoga, and aerobic exercise, which became parts of their daily routines.

The program lasted for only a year. After that, they were on their own. But three years from the start, the study found, 77 percent of the patients had stuck with these lifestyle changes--and safely avoided the need for heart surgery. They had halted - or, in many cases, reversed - the progress of their disease.

I think, it is time to re-study medical health plans that focus on restoring health. It could save billions of dollars in health-care. There must be many doctors besides Dr. Ornish who achieved such successes. All we need is to look into them and adapt their proven strategies into our national health plan schemes. Do we have the political will to practice Creative Governance?

Rehabilitating Criminals

In the largest study of relapse back to crime of 272,111 inmates after they were released from state prisons ; the Justice Department published produced the following alarming statistics : 30 percent of former inmates were rearrested within six months, and 67.5 percent of them were rearrested within three years.

Psychologists and criminologists have come to share the belief that most criminals can't change their lives. These experts believe that many criminals can't change because they're "psychopaths"- they're unlike the rest of humanity because they aren't burdened by conscience. They don't have any empathy for others. They're concerned only for themselves.

An amazing initiative by the Delancey Street Foundation proved these experts wrong. This perceived luxury condominium complex in a choice water-front location is actually a residence where criminals live and work together. Most of them have been labeled as "psychopaths." They typically move to Delancey after committing felonies and having serious problems with addiction-to heroin or alcohol.

500 blacks and Latinos live together with only one professional staffer, Dr. Mimi Silbert who co-founded the program 35 years ago. Dr. Silbert, who's 63 and stands four feet, eleven without guards or supervisors of any kind allow these so-called hard-core criminals to run the place by themselves.

Dr.Silbert entrusts the residents to care for and take responsibility for one another. They kick out anyone who uses drugs, drinks alcohol, or resorts to threats or violence. Although most of them are illiterate when they first arrive, the ex-cons help one another earn their high school equivalency degrees, and they all learn at least three marketable skills.

Together they run the top- rated moving company in the Bay Area, a thriving upscale restaurant, a bookstore- café, and a print shop. In the winter they set up sites around the city where they sell Christmas trees. While taxpayers spend $40,000 a year to support a single prison inmate, Delancey supports itself with profits from its businesses. It never takes money from the government.

After staying at Delancey for four years, most of the residents "graduate" and go out on their own into the greater society. Nearly 60 percent of the people who enter the program make it through and sustain productive lives on the outside. This is indeed the reverse of the statistics compared to the Justice Department figures!

Don't you agree that this is yet another great example of Creative Governance?

Talk on Creative Governance

The above are just two of the many stories on Creative Governance that I have collated.

Please email Dr.YKK at DrYKK@mindbloom.net if you want to invite him to present an illuminating one hour Talk on Creative Governance and thereafter to facilitate a session to help solve a prevailing public and social problem in the spirit of Creative Governance.

I would appreciate if you could share Creative Governance stories with me so that they could be featured here. Please forward your response and contributions to DrYKK@mindbloom.net