Just and Lasting Change: When Communities Own Their Futures.

• Author: Riley-Adams, Ann Dobbs
• Position: GENERAL STUDIES - Book review

Taylor, Daniel C. and Carl E. Taylor. Just and Lasting Change: When Communities Own Their Futures. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.

Just and Lasting Change: When Communities Own Their Futures describes a method for achieving success through change within communities worldwide. The focus is on improvement of health, but the authors contend that the process can achieve desirable development changes in communities of any size. Despite great advances in technology to improve health outcomes, like gene therapy and expensive pharmaceutical treatments, much of the post-colonial world struggles with very basic health problems like hunger, lack of education, and poor living conditions. Just and Lasting Change proposes a model to address these problems for millions of people that is both affordable and achievable even at a community level. This model, commonly referred to as SEED-SCALE, is a combined acronym meaning Self-Evaluation for Effective Decision making and Systems for Collaboration, Adaptive Learning, and Extension. This process allows communities of any size and resource base to improve by comparing themselves to the global community. They can then determine goals and take action based on community priorities and resources, continuing to develop and progress through subsequent actions. SEED-SCALE encourages partnerships between community members, officials, and experts in public health and development, to provide for decision-making based at the local level, with local data and resources. Success achieved can extend to other community development goals and projects, if the community is committed to change and improvement.

Daniel C. Taylor and Carl E. Taylor use a number of historical and current examples to describe their argument. These examples range from Abraham Lincoln's United States to contemporary Kerala, India, and discuss development projects of both rich and poor communities of varying size and organization. The authors have extensive experience in international public health, serving both on faculty and in the field in many developing nations, working closely with public health agencies. They have a long history of promoting health improvement at the community level. Their professional experience and commitment give additional weight to their argument, and insight to their...