In Launching and Leading Change Initiatives in Health Care Organizations, David A. Shore, PhD, of the Harvard School of Public Health, launches a direct assault on one of health cares greatest problems: pathological resistance to change, even in the face of overwhelming forces, owing the inability to manage simple projects. Founder of a popular graduate course on project management at Harvard, Shore provides a practical, hands-on, easily accessible book that speaks directly to the concerns of health care professionals and managers--the people who want things to change, but who keep encountering the land mines Shore describes.Health care projects depend on astute management of change. But more than anything else, they depend on leaders who pay attention, who understand the importance of starting right, and who know how to launch projects that succeed. If leaders can increase the percentage of successful projects, patients and practitioners everywhere will be better off. So will the organizations that depend on these projects for innovation. As will the leaders themselves, for they will be accomplishing their goals rather than running down perpetual blind alleys. Projects fail, of course, for many reasons. But Shores research and experience suggest one underlying malady that infects nearly every dead or dying project: a poor launch. Whatever the specifics of an ailing projects diagnosis, the trouble was almost always built in from the beginning.