In an increasingly complex society with many social and health concerns, the need for learning new approaches to meet family and community health needs increases. One way to approach finding new approaches is to look at innovations and best practices. The design of both innovations and best practices reflects complicated and complex areas of work. Glouberman and Zimmerman1 discuss the differences between simple, complicated, and complex problems. They say that simple problems are those that lend themselves to a recipe-type approach such as baking a cake. If you follow a set of steps you are likely to reach the desired outcome. How easy our lives would be if we had more recipes to follow in our personal and professional roles. Complicated problems rely on a more formula-driven approach that relies on expert knowledge. For example, sending a rocket to the moon is an example of a complicated problem. If you carefully follow a formula based on extensive knowledge and eliminate intervening variables, the outcome should be predictable.
The last type, complex problems, is one in which past experience added to advice from experts serve as the starting point for problem solving but offers no guarantee of success. The example of raising a child is one of complex problem solving. Many parents try to apply the same childrearing skills to more than one child and find that the outcomes are dramatically different. There are many variables at play that interrupt the direct translation of practices from one parent and child to another. Dealing effectively with family and community health needs is mostly a complex problem but can be complicated and on occasion simple in nature.
This issue of Family and Community Health reflects a range of articles that describe examples of best practices. The articles are intended to help others streamline and/or improve existing projects so that readers can learn from the experiences of the authors. The articles contained in this issue are excellent resources. These best practice projects were designed to improve relationships and collaboration between all individuals in the healthcare community. It may be helpful to look at the United Nation's Best Practices and Local Leadership Programme (BLP), which defines best practices as "initiatives undertaken by two or more partners at the national, city or community level that effectively address chronic social, economic and environmental programs."2 Best practices are more than benchmarking. The aim of looking at best practices is to improve quality, effectiveness, and productive output, and this typically requires considerable collaboration. I hope that the articles in this issue, which are described in the Foreword, will provide some guidance in dealing with simple, complicated, and complex family and community health concerns.
Jeanette Lancaster
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