“Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing ‘patterns of change’ rather than ‘static snapshots.” ⏤ Peter Senge Tweet Systems thinking is getting more popular than ever as more and more people realize
“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of mankind as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.” Mohandas Gandhi Tweet Here at VNL, we talk a lot about the importance the importance of social support and connectedness. However, for many of us, this
PARTNER continues to grow with the addition of our newest feature: Member Profiles! This exciting new tool allows you to focus in on specific members of your network, viewing all their network maps and data on a single page for easy analysis. You can download
It’s more and more common for people working towards social impact to build and work in networks to reach their shared goals. By sharing information and resources, coordinating their activity, and collectively measuring their impact, a network can accomplish far more than a single individual
The importance of the social determinants of health is becoming more and more well-known among healthcare providers and practitioners. By helping patients meet their social needs like housing, transportation, food security and education, research suggests we can improve their overall health and well-being in ways
Social network analysis has been around for many decades in academic circles, but it has only recently become a popular learning tool for networks and other collaboratives. For many decades we build partnerships and collaboratives largely based on gut and intuition, utilizing a ‘more is
The past year of the pandemic and social distancing has clearly deemonstratted the importance of social connectedness in determining health and well-being outcomes. At VNL, our years of systems mapping has included research and development specifically to develop tools for providers to use this knowledge
Systems thinking is an important perspective for all network leaders! A network is fundamentally a system, experiencing many of the same dynamics that other systems go through, including emergence, feedback loops, and interconnection. We’ve come across many insightful systems thinking quotes and sayings over our
We’re excited to share that we’re growing out staff again at VNL. Bria Thomas, our new Research & Data Technologist, brings a wealth of experience from the public health field, along with a diverse skillset in technology and innovation. She’ll be working with both our
For those working in the field of social impact, building networks is part of the new normal. Creating partnerships with other organizations lets us share resources and knowledge, coordinate our action, and leverage diverse forms of value like influence and experience. However it is too
Colorado’s Early Childhood Councils play an important role in improving health, education and other social outcomes for kids. They do this by connecting and coordinating work between stakeholders in the early childhood ecosystem. This includes nonprofits, government agencies, healthcare providers, educators, and other community organizations.
As the Councils have continued to grow and add new members to their network, they struggled to understand, track and measure their network quality and impact. Without concrete data and evidence to guide their work, they lacked a clear strategy for their network’s future and were concerned about losing their competitive advantage.
Most organizational networks are in a similar situation: Focusing on fostering more connections, more meetings, and more coordination and integration, without clear data to guide their effort. Dr. Varda realized that networks need visibility into their process outcomes like structure, quality, agreement and attribution to guide their strategy.
With this insight in mind, we worked to create PARTNER, our platform for tracking and visualizing networks, systems and ecosystems. It provided the Early Childhood Councils visibility into their partnerships with metrics like trust and value, so they could identify what was working and where to focus their strategy for the future.
Today the Councils have used their PARTNER data to reassess their strategy, demonstrate the impact of their work, and advance their mission in the future. Learn more about PARTNER below.
Nearly a decade ago, our founder Dr. Danielle Varda accompanied her mother to a check-in appointment with oncologist. Her mom had been fighting breast cancer for nearly a year and was beginning to struggle to take care of herself all by herself.
During the appointment, the doctor asked Mrs. Varda if she had help at home with things like picking up prescriptions and preparing meals. Her mom responded that she had several daughters in the area to help, so the provider moved on to the next question with little more thought.
However, the doctor didn’t know the whole story: for various reasons, Mrs. Varda could not depend entirely on her family for care and support. She tried to make do on her own as much as she could, making decisions that likely reduced her quality of life and reduced her chances of recovery.
Dr. Varda realized that our support networks are a significant factor in our health and well-being, especially for those undergoing care and treatment. While most providers realize this link exists, they lack the data and visibility needed to measure and improve their patient connectedness. She set out to build a tool that met this pressing need.
This year we introduced our solution to the world: PARTNERme, A Person-Centered Network Tool. It’s an easy-to-use patient screener that allows then to share both their social needs and social support network with their provider, so they can ask the right questions and connect them to resources to improve health and well-being. Learn more about PARTNERme here.
VNL won the Prime Health Innovation Challenge for PARTNERme! Watch our award-winning Pitch.
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a copy of our 35-page Guide. It’s full of our top advice for those building, managing and evaluating networks.
A CPRM is a Community Partner Relationship Management system. Basically it’s like a CRM for organizational ecosystems. While a standard CRM simply tracks interactions with direct contacts like customers, a CPRM is designed to track an entire ecosystem—not just how an organization interacts with its own partners, but how all of them interact with each other.
Equal parts strategy and technology, PARTNER uses network science and data to track these ecosystems over time. This helps organizations understand and evolve their collaborative strategies, and ultimately increase the impact of their work.