Greetings from the LHH! I took a little more time off than I thought I would. When I last wrote to you, it was New Year’s Eve, and winter was just beginning. Now we are mid-May and the LHH is burgeoning with life. The leaves have not yet fully unfurled, but everything is turning green and hopeful.
I’ve just said goodbye to the Class of 2026 from our program. This was the 12th UNH class I have seen graduate. Some of the Class of 2027 will be starting their internships next week, so the river keeps on rolling.
Dat ol' man river He mus'know sumpin' But don't say nuthin' He jes' keeps rollin' He keeps on rollin' along
The seasons change, the kids come and go, and I get a little older. Maybe a little wiser. I hope at least a little.
So it’s been a minute since I last wrote to you, but I’ve been quite busy despite my silence. I have a paper out under review at an academic journal, and I have a couple of papers up on the web that some of you might be interested in. One is on the impact of household wealth on health outcomes, and another that applies the 3C’s of meaning to healthcare leadership. I’ll put links to both of them below.
A change I’m going to allow myself going forward is to be a little less slavish to having at least one R, W, and L each week. A lot of times I worked really hard to find something for the watch category in particular because I am not a video fan. Well, I mean, I will get sucked into the doom scroll of reels with the best of them, but you guys don’t really want to watch jiu-jitsu videos and my new favorite comedian is Nina Conti who is a hilarious, sometimes off-color, ventriloquist, so I watch a lot of that, but it’s mostly just brain rot, and I’m hoping that this newsletter will be a little relief from the ubiquitous brain rot. At least for me.
It’s good to be back. On to the links. As usual, willing good for all of you!
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Read
What: Mark Bonica, Covering the Care: Why Financial Resources Matter for Health
https://scholars.unh.edu/ihpp/199/
Why: “Drawing on decades of research from economics, public health, and social epidemiology, it shows how limited financial resources shape health through multiple pathways that unfold over different time horizons—from immediate consequences to cumulative effects that build over a lifetime.”
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What: Mark Bonica, Leading for Meaning: A Practical Framework for Sustainable Performance
Why: “This paper advances an evidence-based claim for executives: meaningful work is shaped less by individual motivation than by leadership and work design. Leaders do not manufacture meaning for employees, but they inevitably influence whether work environments support or undermine the experience of meaning. In this sense, leaders function as meaning architects, responsible for designing the conditions under which people can do good work well, see that their work matters, and experience belonging without harm.”
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Watch
What: TEDX, Poverty isn’t a lack of character; it’s a lack of cash (15 min)
https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lack_of_character_it_s_a_lack_of_cash
Why: The speaker asserts the same basic assumption that I work with in Covering the Care above. Poverty overwhelms.
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Listen
What: Conversations with Coleman, Is Your Life Morally Ambitious Enough? (71 min)
Why: “Today, he joins the show to discuss his latest book, Moral Ambition, which he defines as the desire to use your available talents and resources to make the world a better place rather than focus solely on individual wealth. He argues the real question is whether the work you’ve chosen is ambitious enough in moral terms—whether your day-to-day life tackles the big problems facing humankind. He explains why “follow your passion” is often bad advice; why moral breakthroughs tend to come from small, disciplined groups rather than mass appeal; and why moral progress is neither automatic nor inevitable.”