# LINKAGE MAPS (SOCIOSCOPES) **“OUR BIGGER PICTURE”**
_WHY and WHO?_ _Before jumping into this, I want to state the purpose of linkage maps, since they can be put to all manner of use—some helpful, some lucrative, and some positively evil._
_My whole point in creating this platform is for people living near one another to **see** how they can co-create desired lives and livelihoods in or near their neighborhoods. As neighbors have been giving up, giving in to, outside influence. There are ways to reclaim neighborhood living by seeing together and working together._
**WHAT?** A tool or instrument to see what has been largely invisible to us. Like Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek a Dutch businessman, scientist, and one of the notable representatives of the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology--his microscope was a necessary precursor microbiology and understanding infectious diseases and cellular biology. I have begun to imagine what may result from the use of this tool, this socioscope.
These developing essays 
are not offered as a bible or even as an instruction manual. They may become an annotated story of my journey--looking to pragmatically understand life’s inter-workings, for the benefit of our communities and our families.
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# VISUAL LINKAGE MAPS
Washington State’s "Healthier Washington" program and it’s associated initiative "Accountable Communities of Health" both encourage us to self-organize at the regional level. There is a growing awareness at the top, that there is no way to control the social determinants of health and wellbeing from Olympia, the state capital. There is an emerging structure for innovation to be funded at progressively refined scales. From the state to nine newly conceived regions and from each of these to even more refined areas and groups.
The emerging realization, that local problems and opportunities are in fact local and must be conceived and handled locally, has not yet managed to link up with the million or so mothers that are actually organizing what health and wellbeing that currently exists. It is this final connection, or better yet this originating connection, that our work is intended to facilitate. Yes we all understand that the top cannot organize at this level of complexity. What we have not yet take on is how to enable **massive self-organizing at the mother to mother level** and connect that with levels of funding and policy and service above.
Paulo Freire has some advise for us here—listen, don’t interfere, don’t imagine that you know what they should do.
Respond only to their self-organizing, to their requests and offers. Stop making offers that distort their desires. Stop using “best practices”. Stop trying move faster than trust allows. Let’s stop the colonial assault on our own people.
The visual linkage maps enable us to see the **parts and the connection of a region**—the institutions, entities, and relationships that impact health and wellbeing in a region. It allows us to display possibilities as well as the work being done between and among entities—public health, medical providers, social services, schools, foundations.
It also has the potential to display systems. Systems for food production and distribution and use. Systems for accessing medical services, justice services, and educational and vocational services. Systems for locating meaningful work. Systems for self-care and support. Systems...
Working together, we can develop and maintain **our view** of what is happening and we may more systematically transform health and wellbeing at the local (family, neighborhood, community, county) and regional levels.
Policies, programs, projects and processes must **scale down to fit** unique people living in unique places. Forget mass customization. Offers and requests for meaningful policies, programs, projects and processes can originate from unique people living together in unique places. These possibilities can be shown to government workers, foundations, institutions, businesses. If they make sense they can be supported. **Bottom up to fit.**
Seeing the Community as a **System of Health and Wellbeing**
Never confuse health with wellbeing. Wellbeing is larger. Wellbeing encompasses health. But never separate health from more general wellbeing. They are causally linked. Lower wellbeing and get worse health. Lower health and get lower wellbeing.
Each neighborhood and community contributes to the health and wellbeing of its residents. Each community has resources, institutions and people. All perspectives can contribute to the improvement of health. The Visual Linkage Map allows us to see a community's system of health—far beyond the medical and social services into the neighborhoods where people live and **where their health and wellbeing are formed and determined**. We can see neighborhood and community resources, institutions and associations. We can see the interactions and the missing interactions (opportunities).
With this tool, the changes we **wish** for in a “community of health” can be visualized. Our **progress** toward those changes can be communicated and understood. We can **design** improvements that are fiscally sound, community-based and population health focused, rather than the more common approach of making improvements in a reactive manner.
We are working on a working version in Whatcom County and we are loading the database with institutions in the county along with the improvements they are working on. We will display this information on regional maps, like Google Maps. Among other uses, this is a planning, communicating and tracking aid open for anyone actively improving the health and wellbeing of the region.