Question

What are some drivers of the Shared Value Mindset? Provide at least 2 examples and justification.

Answer 1

Answer:

Some drivers of the Shared Value Mindset :

1. Mindset and Expectations,

2. Sense of Community,

3. Civic Engagement.

To stimulate research about how Action Area One and its drivers may impact health, Evidence for Action (E4A), a signature research funding program of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation( RWJF), developed and released a national Call for Proposals (CFP). The process of formulating the CFP and reviewing proposals surfaced important challenges for research on creating and sustaining shared values to foster and maintain a Culture of Health and Mindset. In this essay, we describe these considerations and provide examples from funded projects regarding how challenges can be addressed.

In the Action Framework, drivers are defined broadly, which gives researchers and practitioners the flexibility to both conceptualize and measure them in different ways. For example, Sense of Community has previously been defined by scholars as an individual's sense of membership or emotional connection to a community or group (McMillan and Chavis, 1986). Yet the Framework does not limit the driver to this definition; it can also encompass a number of related constructs, such as social support and social networks (referring to the quantity, quality and density of one's relationships (House, Umberson, & Landis, 1988)), social cohesion (a community-level measure of the attributes that allow groups to function, such as trust between and among community members (Chuang, Chuang, & Yang, 2013)), and social capital (norms and resources that exist among groups that facilitate interactions and transactions (Lochner, Kawachi, & Kennedy, 1999; Szreter and Woolcock, 2004)). The common thread tethering these different interpretations to the Action Framework is the idea that cultivating a connection to others is an integral component to developing and sustaining shared values.

At the same time, many related concepts that are conceptually distinct are commonly conflated in discussions or research on the Action Framework. The Mindset and Expectations driver is especially vulnerable to this, given that both “mindset” and “expectations” have broad uses both colloquially and within other academic disciplines. The Framework employs this driver to represent the idea of a shared set of values, norms, and priorities that support health and health equity. This shared outlook may be reflected in measures at the individual level, such as opinions about health equity policies, motivations to act toward a common interest, or perceived interconnectedness or interdependence; or they may be captured at a social level, such as in school climate, norms and values. However, despite these broad parameters, other interpretations of “mindset” do not directly relate to the Action Framework: for example, mindfulness (awareness of one's thoughts, feelings, and sensations), knowledge (e.g. about a particular topic), and one's mindset toward a specific personal behavior such as healthy eating or physical activity. These interpretations all engage similar-sounding terminology but relate more to individually-centered mentalities rather than a shared value system. Finally, while the original nomenclature for the driver uses the singular “mindset” (Chandra et al., 2016) to capture the notion of a distinct, convergent viewpoint shared by many people, the plural “mindsets” can be used to convey that there may be multiple variations of a shared viewpoint, depending on context – all of which can actuate a Culture of Health.

In the context of RWJF's vision and research investments, investigators are encouraged to contemplate novel ways to frame and interpret drivers, but they should consider whether these interpretations still relate directly to a Culture of Health. The studies that were funded through the CFP present a diverse set of examples of how drivers may be conceptualized. In one study, Mindset and Expectations are represented by decision makers' intentions to support policies that benefit historically marginalized groups. Another study characterizes Mindset and Expectations about health as being situated on a spectrum that ranges from a “shame and blame” paradigm to a more refined socio-ecological understanding of the root causes of health disparities. In a third study, Mindset and Expectations are represented by the underlying values and beliefs about gun ownership and stewardship shared by diverse sub-cultures of the gun-owning population. The final study uses opinions about health interconnectedness (perceived interconnectedness and support for health) as an indicator of a community's Mindset and Expectations.