Really Simple Social Action (RSSA)

Epidemic of Health (EOH) is a conceptual model for thinking about a future health care system. This is a term first proposed by Jonas Salk, who discovered the Polio vaccine and founded the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Ca. From Heather Wood Ion's presentation at the Uplift Academy's Good Ancestors Workshop:

"[Salk] saw great danger in our failures to focus on the positive, on
health-creating aspects of mind. Always the optimist, he felt that if
we did focus on the positive, then it would be possible to create an
epidemic of health. This would depend on a change to an understanding
of health as wholeness, and of how the health of mind-effects is as
critical as the health of physical effects. He was fascinated by the
work being done on memes, and hoped that it might be enhanced by
reflections and contributions by epidemiologists. As a physician, Jonas
would begin any intervention with the question “What makes your heart
leap?” for he felt that true health begins with an understanding of our
individual purpose and how to make that manifest by our actions."

Tom Munnecke and Heather Wood Ion first published a paper on the notion of an Epidemic of Health in the August, 1995 issue of US Medicine Magazine. This was followed up by a June, 1999 workshop Steps towards an Epidemic of Health and it also became a part of the Vvaleo Initiative for health care reform with Dee Hock. It became a core principle in Munnecke's HealthSpace concept paper, as well as part of the Opening Chapter
(co-authored with Rob Kolodner) of Person-Centered Health Records : Toward HealthePeople. (Springer Verlag, 2005). Some theoretical foundations for networks of uplift may be found in Reeds Law of Group-forming Networks and concepts of Viral Architecture of networks.

Alcoholics Anoymous is an example of the kind of thinking involved with an epidemic of health. It is one of the most successful programs to treat addiction, yet it is highly decentralized, self-organizing and self-propagating model. It's success with alcoholism has evolved over the years to deal with other forms of addiction.

RSSA could be used to support EOH concepts by tracking health care activities in a loosely coupled network of people, organizations, and activities around a person's health. The person's individual health care would be the activity space pointed to by the RSSA links, allowing a flexible and individually controllable "personal health space" that would also include the personal health record.