Events Archive

04.12.11

Tufts University
The Tufts Idea Exchange (TEX) is a TED-style forum for ideas-the seeds of innovation that grow into new projects and discoveries. The mission of tex. is simple: to create an ideal environment for ideas to thrive and be shared. Join us APRIL 12, 2011, 7 PM - 10 PM, at the Cabot Intercultural Center (ASEAN Auditorium)! 7 Tufts students and 3 Tufts faculty will be presenting their ideas, followed by a reception. Monique Sternin, co-founder of the Positive Deviance Initiative will present positive deviance. Read more...

04.08.11

Wilkinson College
Wilkinson College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of Communications presents, Dr. Arvind Singhal - Focusing on What Works! Positive Deviance and Healthy Communities, Friday, April 8, 2011 at 1 p.m. in Beckman Hall 104.

02.23.11

Clinton School of Public Service
Video of Dr. Arvind Singhal's presentation at Clinton School of Public Service is now available. On February 16th, Dr. Arvind Singhal spoke at the Clinton School of Public Service about improving health care through positive deviance. If you missed the event, you may click here to access the entire presentation as a video.

02.16.11

Clinton School of Public Service
Clinton School of Public Service: On Wednesday, 2/16@12:00pm visting fellow Dr. Arvind Singhal will discuss his book about ways to improve health care through "positive deviance," an approach to social change that enables communities and organizations to discover the wisdom they already have and act on it.(@The Clinton School of Public Service, Sturgis Hall) *Book signing to follow

02.08.11

Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein
Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, Sao Paulo, Brazil recently published a brief article and video (Portuguese and English) about how the hospital has been using Positive Deviance to reduce the rate of infections. Please click the link to access the article and video in both English (subtitles) and Portuguese.

02.07.11

World Affairs Commentary by Rahim Kanani
Rahim Kanani recently interviewed Dr. Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, to discuss the evolution of social innovation, and the role that the foundation is playing to systematically advance the field moving forward. Dr. Rodin mentions Positive Deviance as "a real user driven innovation".

01.26.11

Free Webinar: Positive Deviance - Stopping the Spread of Hospital-Acquired Infections. In this free virtual learning event, Liz Rykert will introduce the concepts and ideas behind Positive Deviance, as it applies to reducing the spread of hospital-acquired infections. Participants will learn how and when to apply the process, methods to uncover existing solutions and approaches to measuring and tracking progress. Positive Deviance has a focus on behavioral change and is based on the premise that in all large systems with intractable problems, some people do better. The webinar will also cover how staff figure out solutions and how to design ways to spread the practices among your peers.

12.02.10

On Thursday, December 2, from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM, Monique Sternin co- founder of the Positive Deviance Initiative and Randa Wilkinson, Director of Training at the Positive Deviance Initiative at Tufts University will share stories on how Positive Deviance has changed seemingly intractable problems in multiple sectors. The event will take place at Babson College campus in the Olin Auditorium (120). The event is hosted by The Lewis Institute.

11.29.10

The PDI was an active contributor in the recent Tufts Friedman Symposium. A pre-symposium workshop was conducted by Randa Wilkinson (Director of Training) during which 17 participants learned about the PD concept, the application of PD to under 5 malnutrition, and some of the challenges in implementing PD Hearth. The group then broke up into smaller teams to practice some participatory learning activities and look at actual case studies involving PD Hearth in various settings.

11.29.10

strategy+business magazine
The Power of Positive Deviance by Richard T. Pascale, Jerry Sternin, and Monique Sternin, has been named "this year's best business book on management" by strategy+business magazine in an article by David K. Hurst entitled, "Best Business Books 2010: Management." Hurst provides wonderful overviews of both the PD method and the content of the book and points out that the stories in The Power of Positive Deviance "are evocative and compelling." Click to read full article.

11.18.10

Two of the leading experts (Mark Munger and Lars Thuesen) in this new field at the cutting edge of behavioral science will deliver a seminar at Central European University (CEU). Positive Deviance is a formula for systemic change based on the observation that in every community there are individuals and groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, while having access to the same resources and facing similar or worse constraints and challenges. Some chronic social problems which have significant costs are historic, such as childhood malnutrition. Others are resurgent - for example, youth violence. Still others are emergent - hospital-acquired infections from which more than one hundred thousand people in the US die annually. Positive Deviance has been used in a wide variety of circumstances to address and solve, in a sustained manner, such behavioral and social problems. Often, the solutions are invisible to the larger community. Once discovered, they can be employed by many, without generating resistance often associated with top-down, expert-driven problem solving.

11.04.10

Tufts University
The Friedman School Symposium (Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy) will offer a half-day Introductory Workshop to Symposium participants on Positive Deviance Nutrition & "PD Hearth" on the afternoon of November 4th, the day before the Symposium kicks off. The workshop will be limited to 20 Symposium participants so that everyone is guaranteed a hands-on and enriching experience. This workshop is being offered at no additional charge thanks to a gift from The Coca-Cola Company. This half day workshop will cover a brief orientation to the PD concept, the history of "PD Hearth", scale up issues and implementing variations to adapt to local cultures and communities, and selected challenges encountered in this community based, community empowerment model.

10.14.10

The Wisconsin Division of Public Health is sponsoring a hands-on opportunity to learn positive deviance (PD), an approach to culture change based on the idea that there are certain individuals ("positive deviants") in every community who find successful solutions to complex problems with the exact same resources and obstacles as their peers. Used in many industries, PD is taking hold in healthcare to engage all levels of staff to identify and amplify solutions that already exist in their facility, including strategies to reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAI). The process fosters a deep sense of ownership of durable solutions among frontline staff. The workshop facilitator will be Jon C. Lloyd, MD, FACS, Senior Associate at the Positive Deviance Initiative and Clinical Advisor to the Plexus Institute. The workshop will be held on October 14, 2010 from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Chula Vista Resort, Wisconsin Dells. To learn more about and register for the conference, please click "Read More" below. Register by September 30, 2010.

09.29.10

Book: Protecting Children from Exploitation and Trafficking - Using the Positive Deviance Approach in Uganda and Indonesia

09.27.10

3M
On September 27, 2010 Dr. Jon C. Lloyd spoke at the 3M Prevention Leadership Summit about how Positive Deviance can be used to eliminate hospital acquired infections (HAI's). During the presentation Dr. Lloyd discussed how Positive Deviance can be used as a cultural approach to fight healthcare-associated infections. 3M has made complete video footage of this presentation available through their website (click to link). The objectives of this 90 minute presentation include: becoming acquainted with the fundamentals of PD, knowing how and when PD can be used to find and amplify solutions to HAIs hidden within the hospital culture, discovering how PD might complement your current improvement methods, and understanding the quantitative and qualitative evaluation tools PD uses for measuring performance.

09.26.10

Dr. Jon C. Lloyd will present at the 3M Infection Prevention Leadership Summit from September 26-28 at the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. During the presentation Dr. Lloyd will explore how Positive Deviance can be used as a cultural approach to fight healthcare-associated infections. The Summit will provide an opportunity for attendees to participate in a series of interactive sessions focused on clinical processes and the human factors of infection prevention. The faculty are experts in their field and will facilitate invigorating discussion around innovative ways to reduce HAIs and improve patient outcomes.

09.22.10

Register Now: Positive Deviance and Better Health Conference to be held September 22-24, 2010 in Bethesda, Maryland. Description: Positive Deviance and Better Health Conference sponsored by Plexus Institute and the Positive Deviance Initiative. Problems often contain solutions that aren't immediately apparent. All the parts of a healthcare system-or any system-are interconnected and continuously changing, visibly and invisibly. Join us to learn how Positive Deviance can help liberate the hidden forces that bring out the best in your community.

09.22.10

On September 22nd-24th the Positive Deviance Initiative and the Plexus Institute held the PD & Better Healthcare conference. Focused on the use of positive deviance in healthcare, over 40 participants from the US and Canada, representing a variety of sectors, came together for three days of introduction to the approach and skills building.

09.20.10

Wisdom of the Outliers: A deceptively simple approach is solving some of the world's most intractable social problems, By Taylor McNeil. Read this article about Positive Deviance, recently featured in the Tufts Journal.

09.02.10

Dr Leo Celi, (Harvard Medical School / MIT) will present a free teleclass that will be broadcast live from the NDICN Conference, New Zealand to the South Pacific region, and rebroadcast in North America on September 2, 2010 (9-10am in Sydney) - Rebroadcast at 1:30pm Eastern (New York). The teleclass will focus on creating a culture of quality and safety to reduce nosocomial infections. Dr. Celi will compare the use of industrial tools for quality management and improvement, such as Lean and Six Sigma with Positive Deviance.

08.12.10

Dr. Jon Lloyd will present a teleclass through Webber Training on August 12 entitled, "Positive Deviance: Unleashing Secret Change Agents in Your Hospital to Prevent MRSA Infections." If you would like to register, please contact: picnet@phsa.ca.

07.26.10

REGISTER NOW: Positive Deviance: The What. The How. A two day workshop in Boston, MA (7.26-7.27.2010) about how to unleash existing assets to solve complex problems. This event will be a fast paced, interactive opportunity to familiarize yourself with a wide variety of PD applications, practice the essential steps of the PD process, and explore the secret sauce that fosters its extraordinary track record.

06.17.10

MassBay Organizational Development Learning Group (ODLG) has invited Randa Wilkinson, Director of Training at the Positive Deviance Initiative, to share the theoretical foundations and practical implications of Positive Deviance as it relates to Organization Development. The event will take place on Thursday, June 17 from 5:30 to 8:30 at the Episcopal Diocese at 138 Tremont St., Boston. The event is open to to the general public for a fee of $30 ($15 for students) which includes a buffet dinner. Click to Register.

06.11.10

The New Yourk Journal of Books recently reviewed the newly released book "The Power of Positive Deviance." The positive review suggests that the book "deserves more than a cursory glance - it should be required reading for the powers that be. How about a copy delivered to the in-box of every Congressman and cabinet secretary for starters?"

06.11.10

Join us for a chat on Twitter about Positive Deviance! #HBRchat: On Thursday 07.01.10 at 1:00 EDT, Harvard Business Review will be co-moderating a Twitter chat about positive deviance with Monique Sternin (@PDInitiative), co-author of The Power of Positive Deviance. The chat will focus on positive deviants -the individuals around us who work under the same constraints as the rest of us, but still succeed against all odds. By seeing solutions where others don't, positive deviants spread and sustain needed change. To join the conversation, simply login to Twitter on July 1st at 1:00EDT follow @HBRexchange, and search for the #HBRchat tag.

06.09.10

The website for the book, "The Power of Positive Deviance," co-authored by Jerry Sternin, Monique Sternin, and Richard Pascale, launched on 6.8.2010. The website (www.powerofpositivedeviance.org) provides valuable resources, including a field guide, excerpts, reviews, slides, and more.

04.21.10

Florida Association for Healthcare Quality
Wednesday, 4.21.10 @8:00am-12:00pm. Jon C. Lloyd and David Gasser will be presenting the workshop "Positive Deviance: Unleashing Your Secret Change Agents to Prevent HA-MRSA and Other Wicked Problems" at the Florida Association for Healthcare Quality's 2010 Annual Conference "Starlight in the Sunshine": Best Practices Across the Healthcare Spectrum.

04.20.10

IDN Summit & Expo Conference
Tuesday, April 20 @ 2:45-4:00pm. The session, presented by Dr. Jon C. Lloyd, MD, will consist of a brief PD primer and review of pre-reading materials followed by an interactive discussion of how this approach can be applied to improve supply chain performance to enhance patient care.

04.18.10

Unite For Sight
Sunday, April 18 @1:00-2:30pm Session W19: Lessons Learned and Approaches That Work "From The Inside Out: Uncovering Solutions to Intractable Problems Through Positive Deviance," Lisa Kimball, President, Plexus Institute

04.18.10

Unite for Sight
Sunday, April 18@4:20-5:40pm. Session W211: Social Enterprise Pitches - Ideas in Development "Entrepreneurs as Positive Deviants: A Positive Deviance Approach to Economic Development," Kenneth Hynes, Managing Director, ontheFRONTIER Group

04.09.10

Helen Keller International and the PDI
Senegal: L'Approche de la Deviance Positive appliquee aux Secteurs de la Sante et du Developpement

04.01.10

Positive Deviance Resource Center, Indonesia
Are you interested to join Positive Deviance Approach Training? 10 seats are available for members who want to enroll in "PD Approach training addressing malnutrition underfive," which will be held in West Java Province, Garut District, Indonesia. Activities will be held for 12 days from April 1-14, 2010.

01.19.10

The Positive Deviance Initiative (PDI), in collaboration with The Positive Deviance Resource Centre, School of Public Health (University of Indonesia), and The Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia, Department of Community Health and Nutrition, is holding the First Regional Positive Deviance Forum, January 19-21, 2010, in Bali, Indonesia.

05.28.09

On May 28, 2009 the California Teachers Association’s Institute for Teaching (CTA IFT) offered a workshop about how to use the Positive Deviance approach to reduce African American and Latino student high school dropouts. The concepts of PD have been presented to more than 100 educators in CA, representing about 25 schools. Participants have been intrigued, and during the summer, a number of schools and individuals are exploring the potential of PD to work on chronic problems. Because of the financial chaos in CA, the reduction of teachers in every district and every school, PD has particular appeal as teachers and schools have to ‘do more with less.’