Policy ideas often fail because they are not designed around local system and community capacity, political will, and information about what has failed or worked in other places. TERRAIN is a model of social policy design that anticipates and plans around these challenges.
policy formation.
Complex policy challenges require more than a one-size-fits-all solution. Different communities have different histories, systems, resources, political environments, populations, and implementation conditions. Just as you wouldn’t build the same structure on every landscape, policy solutions need to respond to the conditions of the place where they will be implemented.
To work well, social and health policies must respond to the needs of community members and patients, the capacities of service systems, the constraints of government and the will of the public for change. Many well-intentioned efforts to address public problems have limited impact because they miss a crucial reality at one or more of these levels. Developing sustainable and robust solutions to address large scale issues requires multiple types of data, analysis, and planning. But even more than strategic thinking, these complex problems require creativity and vision.
Communities have the vision, TERRAIN builds around the vision to support sustainable change.
