The Do No Harm Frameworks

The Six Lessons of Do No Harm are built into two Frameworks to provide practical guidance on how to make use of the lessons in planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating interventions. These models both capture the same set of relationships and similar information, though because they are laid out differently, each Framework emphasizes different concepts. They can be, and are, used in complementary fashion.

Relationship Framework
Action Framework

What is the Relationship Framework?

The initial framework that emerged from the Project in 1999 showed the relationship of an intervention to a context. It captured the full set of the Six Lessons in an easy to explain diagram. Its explanatory power, simplifying a set of complex dynamics and making them understandable and useable, also makes the Relationship Framework an excellent training tool.

What is the Action Framework?

The Action Framework was developed in 2009 to more closely map how people were using Do No Harm in the field. It models the thought process of Do No Harm users who are being confronted by a dynamic and changing situation and who are iterating rapidly, coming up with and testing new ideas.

Why two Frameworks?

Simply, the Relationship Framework did not adequately capture the working experience of many Do No Harm users. They were using the concepts, but not in the way the Relationship Framework laid out. Do No Harm needs to reflect the actual use of its many practitioners and the two Frameworks do so honestly and accurately.

What are they good for?

The Relationship Framework is good for establishing a common understanding of a context in a team or organization, and that team’s place within the context.

The Action Framework is good for real-time checking of the changes to social dynamics introduced by an intervention.

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