UCL Energy Institute colleagues hold workshop on the middle-out perspective in Israel

8 April 2020

Drs Kathryn Janda and Ian Hamilton from UCL Energy Institute held a workshop in Israel on applying the middle-out perspective to public health

On 11 March 2020, Dr Kathryn Janda and Dr Ian Hamilton from UCL Energy Institute (the Bartlett), with Dr Yael Parag of the Interdisciplinary Centre (IDC), held a “Middle-Out Perspective on Public Health” workshop at IDC in Herzliya, Israel.

This transdisciplinary event brought together seven experts from the UK and 13 from Israel to conceptualise new social and environmental approaches for improving public health. The current coronavirus crisis provided a timely focus for discussions.

Illustration of the middle-out framework

The middle-out perspective (MOP) complements existing theories on facilitating societal change from the top-down (e.g., policy led) and bottom-up (e.g., grassroots activism) by focusing on actor groups that operate in the middle of society, such as religious congregations and building professionals.

A brief video on change from middle-out is available here:

YouTube Widget Placeholderhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vNzTjElcPc

Dr Parag and Dr Janda first developed the middle-out perspective in 2013 to find a new way to foster the transition to a low carbon society. More recently, in 2019 Dr Parag and colleagues applied this thinking to the public health arena.

Workshop participant Professor Jenny Mindell from UCL Department of Epidemiology and Public Health said: “I have now realised that what I have been doing for the past 30 years is 'middle-out' working!”

Going forward, the participants plan several papers and future research projects on synergies between different disciplines, countries and research areas on change from the middle-out.

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