Chatting with Alan 1 - Deciding to complete a PhD by Prior Publication

Yeah, you did something very clever.

Mostly the PPP, when it has been, particularly from our colleagues in medicine, obviously I've supervised a lot of great colleagues from all of the specialisms of medicine doing the PPP, often, Alan, they've got a 20, 30 or 40 year career.

And so the publications have come over this long period of time, often about clinical practice, right? So that's sort of the conventional model of the PPP in medicine.

You've done something very, very clever because you've truncated this conversation.

came into this story wanting to do a PPP and making the publications fit in a particular finite period.

So as you've said, health systems are a priority and you've looked at what often could be configured as minoritarian health systems and how the jigsaw pieces fit together.

That's how I read what you've done.

But I think you've done something interesting.

incredibly significant here now we've got the clustering in place because of your great work and so we're now sitting at seven articles perhaps there's more coming but we're sitting at seven at this point so let's get to this what are you hoping will be the sock the significant original contribution to knowledge noting that each of those words have quite a specific use.

So what is the SOC that is now emerging from the cluster?

So I suppose my pin, my tagline is for systems approach to population health and policy.

So I'm trying to produce frameworks, different size systems, little ideas, some points.

I want to produce something that is sort of like a... instruction manual for how do we think about systems how do we improve them how do we structure our thoughts about health systems and how do we apply it to the real world so a lot of my settings are in in towns and in local health districts will the same system work in other towns if It's up to the town, it's up to the policymakers who are reading it, but it's having that idea of here's the template, do with it what you will and improve the healthcare of the population.

That's what I'm trying to impact on the world.

For me also, it's about easing the learning curve health systems that can be very complex and can be misleading and where do we start and how do we do it? It was a learning curve I had to overcome.

If I can produce something that's the scaffolding, the template, this is how you go from being the beginner to the professional public health expert, here it is.

And if anyone is interested in pursuing whichever path aspect of the continuum you're on if you'd like to reach out and have a chat i'm more than happy to pass on my my information it's probably not wise information but it's it's information nonetheless

look it is and as i said i think where this is going is you're providing a system a strategy particularly for the triple r environment but as you've said unusual environments so what does medicine look like in antarctica what does it look like in space now who knew this was a thing But what you've done by doing your systems thinking, you're able to then create these, what I almost describe as translation nodes.

So how we create a system that is able to, with respect and decency, overlay very unusual environments.

And for a triple R environment, that's a really profound intervention, I think, which we're reaching sort of the end of our first conversation made.