You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you’ll live in torment if you don’t trust enough.
—Frank Crane
✏️ Catalonia
I think I want to try writing without saying “I”. I feel like it speaks to my soul, like I can’t see the world without “I”. I will try to look from another point.
The wind is cool in Barcelona; sitting by the water, looking out at the boats and the lights and the ‘gifts’ of civilization, is something that will linger for a while. The world is large and has much to offer to those with open I’s.
Nature speaks louder than it does to others. From here, it renews the soul, says cosmos into motion and creates links to everyone who has ridden the Earth. Many have come, many more will go. The world has been closer to collapse than this.
Barcelona is unimpressive at times. In its structural makeup at least. It means this city is great for other reasons—for its people, and their hearts. Barcelona resembles an oyster, unattractive to those who do not appreciate its vivacity and complexity. The beach is ordinary, but smells of true love and fond memories. It is beautiful in the way most people are not.
The hotel is pretty, modern; exactly what is not needed. The stars sing songs by the water, and the waves hum the sweetest lullaby.
I will find a peace of myself here.
Ars longa, vita brevis
💡 Food for Thought
The final word in any conversation about architecture, the fundamental issue of any criticism, inadvertently comes back to an idea, the idea of a modern national architecture. And whenever this issue emerges, it inevitably prompts us to wonder: is it possible today for us to have a truly national architecture? Will we be able to have it in the near future? The architectural monument, like any other human creation, requires the energy of a generating idea, a moral medium in which to live and, ultimately, a physical medium from which to materialize, and a more or less perfect instrument of the idea. An artist who adapts the architectural form to that idea, and to the moral and physical media. For every organizing idea that dominates a people, for every outbreak of a new civilization, a new artistic age appears.
In search of a national architecture: La Renaixensa, Barcelona, 31 October 1877.
🧬 Paper of the Week — Understanding the complexity of population health interventions: assessing intervention system theory (ISyT) by Cambon & Alla
Citation: Cambon, L., & Alla, F. (2021). Understanding the complexity of population health interventions: assessing intervention system theory (ISyT). Health Research Policy and Systems, 19(1), 1-11.
Given their inherent complexity, we need a better understanding of what is happening inside the “black box” of population health interventions. The theory-driven intervention/evaluation paradigm is one approach to address- ing this question. However, barriers related to semantic or practical issues stand in the way of its complete integra- tion into evaluation designs. In this paper, we attempt to clarify how various theories, models and frameworks can contribute to developing a context-dependent theory, helping us to understand the black box of population health interventions and to acknowledge their complexity. To achieve this goal, we clarify what could be referred to as “theory” in the theory-driven evaluation of the interventional system, distinguishing it from other models, frameworks and classical theories. In order to evaluate the interventional system with a theory-driven paradigm, we put forward the concept of interventional system theory (ISyT), which combines a causal theory and an action model. We suggest that an ISyT could guide evaluation processes, whatever evaluation design is applied, and illustrate this alternative method through different examples of studies. We believe that such a clarification can help to promote the use of theories in complex intervention evaluations, and to identify ways of considering the transferability and scalability of interventions.
Adiós,
AT