One Friday: Four Futures
What do we want the future of health care in Western New York to look like?
Reaching for Excellence is featured on All That Matters with host Peter Anderson (on YouTube)
Courtesy of Time Warner Cable (March 2008)
The central component to Reaching for Excellence is One Friday: Four Futures, a series of community conversations designed to amplify the voice of all of us – the users of the health care system – in answering the question, “What do we want the future of health care in Western New York to look like?” Launched in January 2008, One Friday: Four Futures is built around four future scenarios – descriptive stories of how the health care system may look in the year 2018 based on different choices made today. These realistic possibilities are presented in narrative form and provide the content around which the community can address its priorities and concerns.
Components of One Friday: Four Futures
The Stories - The focus of One Friday: Four Futures is four descriptive stories presenting different health care futures for the region. The narrative stories allow a common picture to be created for generating dialogue and improved understanding of health care issues for Western New York.
The Conversations - To directly engage Western New Yorkers in this effort, One Friday: Four Futures conversations are being held with communities across Western New York, including block clubs, neighborhood associations, church groups, employees at worksite locations and business organizations, among others. These conversations will take place over the next several months. We encourage you to host a conversation for your own community or organization (it's easy!).
Note: Spanish materials and bilingual facilitators are available for One Friday: Four Futures conversations. Contact us for more information.
Nota: Tenemos materiales en Español y facilitadores bilingües para llevar a cabo las conversaciones “Un Viernes, Cuatro Futuros.” Contáctenos para obtener más información.
Feedback from these community conversations will be the basis of a series of community-driven health care goals, which will drive key indicators of health care system performance for regular monitoring and reporting to the community. Ultimately, the community's health care priorities will help guide decision making by health policymakers, health care systems and providers and community planning efforts, while building the general public's and news media's understanding of the region's health care vision and what needs to happen to realize that vision.
One Friday: Four Futures began with a series of design workshops with 30 community and health care leaders during summer 2007 to develop the scenarios. Others parterning on this component of Reaching for Excellence are Global Business Network, a nationally regarded leader in scenario thinking, which worked with these regional leaders to develop a framework for One Friday: Four Futures, and Just Buffalo Literary Center, which coordinated creation of the four narratives for One Friday: Four Futures.