Health@Davos: Global Trend Sensing for Health Equity

Welcome to the unDavos Summit - A community-organized series of interactive panels, talks, and networking taking place in Davos, Switzerland - and online - in parallel to the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 20-24 Jan 2025. Our mission is threefold: 

• Democratizing Davos: We open the doors to diverse voices and ideas, breaking down traditional barriers to participation. 
• Humanizing Davos: We foster genuine, relationship-driven connections that go beyond transactional networking. 
• Bringing Action to Davos: We turn meaningful discussions into tangible, real-world solutions.

Join us for Health@Davos 2025, an essential event titled “Advancing Global Health Policy & Innovation,” scheduled for January 22, 2025, at the Mountain Plaza Hotel in Davos. This impactful gathering is designed to bring together global leaders, policymakers, innovators, and healthcare professionals to discuss and explore critical topics surrounding resilience and innovation in health systems.

Our panel will address a variety of core areas, including global health resilience, technological innovation, climate change impacts on health, global mental health awareness, and the importance of preventive public health measures. Through dynamic sessions such as keynote addresses, panel discussions, and interactive workshops, participants will engage in meaningful conversations aimed at shaping the future of healthcare.

Featured speakers include:
- **Laura Herman**, Partner, Dalberg 
- **Dr. Joneigh S. Khaldun**, President & CEO, Public Health Accreditation Board 
- **Dr. Craig Spencer**, Emergency Medicine Physician, Brown University School of Public Health 
- **Robert Metzke**, Global Head of Sustainability, Philips 
- **Dr. John Q. Young**, Senior VP for Behavioral Health, Northwell Health 
- **Tisha Boatman**, Global Lead for Healthcare Access, Siemens Healthineers 
- **Dustin Ross**, Founder & CEO, Sunflower Network 
- **His Excellency Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali**, President of Guyana 
- **Professor José Manuel Barroso**, Chair, Gavi; former Prime Minister of Portugal 
- **Dr. Megan Greenfield**, Partner, McKinsey and WEF YGL 
- **Daniella Foster**, Senior VP, Bayer Consumer Health 
- **Anil Soni**, CEO, WHO Foundation 
- **Dr. Timothy Ferris**, President of Red Cell’s Healthcare Practice 
- **Dr. Beatrice Vetter**, Director of NCDs, FIND 
- **Dr. Pascal M. Golec**, Co-Founder, Heights Health 

We invite you to be a part of this transformative event. Register here: https://lu.ma/HealthAtDavos. 

For unDavos 2026 Sponsorship & Partnerships: Exclusive collaboration opportunities: Contact Mark here: https://bit.ly/417TrB9 

Or catch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSXrlO65s-s and browse all podcast episodes here: https://undavos.buzzsprout.com/ 

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And join our global community and let’s spark the change together!  

Transcript

(00:07) [Music] thank you and what a joy to see so many friendly faces in the audience thanks everyone for making your way up to our session today you noticed from Lily's talk uh the description of the agenda we're going to move through a lot of conversations going from the most broad which will be me all the way into very specific dimensions of Health Health Equity and sustainability of our Healthcare systems we want to make sure that we start with a shared understanding of what do we mean by Health Equity this isn't just like oh
(00:35) it's a bummer it's kind of unfair some people have worse Health outcomes than others right this actually gets to the structures and the design of our healthc Care Systems and so I'll share with you some research we did last year for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation looking at Trends in Health Equity from around the world and we think those coupled with some of the ways that um countries and communities are responding can inform all of us in how we might design more Equitable Health Systems so we'll take a broad lens and we'll start with a
(01:00) quick comparison John and Maria John lives on the upper west side of Manhattan he's a banker he's got a great job he's got health insurance he has fresh food in his local grocery he has access to Green spaces he can take his children to the doctor when they need to go and he has access to some of the world's most renowned Physicians of every type Maria Works in John's home Maria lives in Queens her she takes care of her elderly mother who has diabetes and her child who has asthma she does not have health insurance she does not
(01:31) have access to healthy food and her neighborhood does not include much in terms of green spaces and the way each of them live in the city of New York and experience the healthc care system is dramatically different and this gets at the heart of the way we've designed the systems not just the health system right but all these other systems and it's not just Maria right there are millions and millions of people around the world who live in vastly different context but face some of these same barriers to a healthy life so our job is to think
(02:01) about what what the unthinkable what would a different future look like how could we Design Systems again Beyond just the Health Care Systems to improve People's Health and here we can think about social determinance of Health as a framework for this many of you I'm sure familiar with it goes back to the 990s this idea that your postal code has more to do with your health outcomes than even your genetics so how do we think about people in any postal code having the range of resources they need to live life to their fullest and most healthy
(02:29) potential so the research we I'm not really sure where to point this thing um the research we did whoa looked at six Trends and two kind of Mega Trends and if you have been in Davos for more than five minutes you know the mega Trends are climate and AI because every session includes one or both of those topics but the other Trends might surprise you and we'll go through them one by one and then we'll look at how they connect because you will see these connections as I describe them and what's interesting to is to think about what
(02:59) could you do in the the idea of M multi- solving what are some of the things you could do that would actually act against multiples of these Trends with one kind of intervention so the first one we'll talk about is this trend around calls for more Equitable care work women were three times more likely to take up unpaid care work during covid I'm sure that doesn't surprise anyone in the room but the question becomes how do we create systems that will spread the unpaid care load more evenly it's not just caring for our children of course
(03:28) it's caring for the elderly caring for the disabled we did this research globally and then we visited bogot and saw the care blocks have any of you heard of bot's care blocks in here so it's fascinating they've been written up actually quite a bit the city of Bogata has designated real estate in different parts of the city where you can walk in drop your child off to do something fun take your laundry over and have your laundry done go meet someone about a business you'd like to start go to an exercise class go to a health class to
(03:57) train you on whether whether it's heart health or sexual reproductive Health um you can get Services healthc care services there while your children are entertained we had an older woman who was there with her husband and they were doing this darling salsa class together and then he was going to go and get a massage while she went uh and and did a yoga class so there are these interesting sets of services and what stood out here was the incredible Dignity of these there's no Stigma like oh I got to use this service so I'm not
(04:28) going to use it because I don't want my neighbors to know that I need this service right the stigma that goes along with so many of these things in other contexts in Bogata was extraordinary the dignity with which each person was treated in the center um and then for everyone providing the services in the center a real privilege to care for their neighbors in fact um funded by city government uh in a really interesting model that creates a huge break in the long days that are associated with many unpaid caregivers the second Trend relates to
(04:57) that in terms of longevity our caregiving needs grow as lifespan grows 16% of the population will be over 65 years old by 2020 and something like 75% of that growth is going to be in low and middle- income countries places that have not invested in many different models for Elder Care Japan frequently stands out as a model that has as a country that has invested in the elderly they have incentives to keep people employed into their 70s they have policies on the books in terms of elderly accessibility to public spaces
(05:29) to transportation and they set up an interesting intergenerational project following the tsunami in 2011 where you have these houses where multiple Generations come together for meals for fun for entertainment for study help and it creates a tremendous amount of respect for the elderly rather than many models that might try to separate the elderly from the rest of their Community I think there's a lot to learn from Japan not just this uh the third Trend um that we looked at whoa and now it's time for drinks no just
(06:04) kidding uh the third Trend really relates to data and the surge in data related to health so did anyone know practically a third of all the data in the world is Health Data everything from my watch that tells me I walked 20,000 steps yesterday around davo Switzerland to electronic medical records to clinical trial data the data that is exploding from our devices is incredible and inequitable how many people can afford these devices how many people have the health literacy to know how to Advocate with their Physicians about
(06:35) what you might do based on the Health Data you have how many people know how to interpret that data into their own healthy behaviors this varies widely needless to say ask nivy is a program that was started in in India his is in Nigeria it has spread and you can essentially ask questions it's an AI driven chat poot and the answers come back specifically designed for a low literacy community so you can get your answer you can ask whatever you want it's Anonymous and the data that ask niy collects actually helps inform the
(07:06) public health system where do we need to do more interventions where are people asking about a common set of questions where have we not done screening recently because people are asking about when is this coming back so not only does it provide an interface with a patient or a wouldbe patient a Community member but it's also incredible resource for those planning Health Services in these communities and this one has been replicated in a number of places affordable housing is not new news I think we've been facing a housing crisis
(07:34) for a long time but this does not aate uh we do not build enough housing and the cost of building that housing is increasing and the climate implications of that building is profound and so this one you really when you think one in four people does not live in safe housing how can we find alternatives to the housing crisis how do we use the built environment that we have how do we think about this in terms of flexibility with populations as they move and we can expect a lot of people to be moving around as the climate changes on us in
(08:04) the coming years Jordan has an interesting program where Syrian refugees who came to Jordan were invited to move in with local residents so the government said we will pay for improvements to your home if you will host a Syrian refugee now if you're a homeowner you think this seems like a great deal I get to upgrade it add a bedroom or upgrade something in my home but what they found is this provided a temporary housing solution for people who were hopefully temporarily in Jordan but what it did was profoundly change
(08:37) the stigma associated with refugees and people now had a one-on-one ability to understand what on Earth has to be true for you to leave your home and try to start over somewhere else with your family and so the change in stigma was an incredible byproduct that hadn't really been anticipated we think now like oh yes of course that would happen but it turns out that um this housing intervention ended up serving the people of Georgia and the people of Syria uh in a whole new way the fifth one relates to nutrition
(09:05) security and I'm sure you've been to sessions this week about food insecurity and climate resilient agriculture here it's three billion people who in 2020 were not able to afford healthy food we think about the ways this is going to be compounded the incentives in the private sector to push processed foods and the lack of of local healthy food even in the story like Maria um in parts of some of our our wealthiest cities Finland has a fascinating alternative whereby they use their free school lunch program which is for everyone again there is no
(09:39) Stigma in walking up and getting your free lunch every child gets their free lunch and during that time they train them about nutrition and about where the food is coming from so the self-resilience and and self- dependence for Finland means hey guess what we're going to a lot of fish we're going a lot of chicken and that's that's why right we're not going to move food all around the globe so you have every Berry you want in any meal you might prefer to have it and there is a tremendous amount of pride that comes from this and
(10:05) children actually not just eating the healthy food and therefore having the benefit of healthy food but actually understanding the connection between that food and the place where they live the last I'll I'll touch on relates to the growing demand for public spaces so remember when like that big street was full of cafes um or the bike lanes were for Walkers and the bike's got the space in the car co really ignited our imagination about what's possible in public spaces but 70% of the world is really increasing increasing demand for
(10:36) public spaces and this example in Louisville is one of my favorites so in Louisville which is a fast growing we call them heat islands in the United States cities where the routine temperature is is rising they don't have enough tree cover there's not enough shade and they faed a tremendous infrastructure problem as a result of this so they did a clinical trial with trees as the medicine so literally control group intervention group $12 million plant a couple thousand trees and they could trace the decrease in the
(11:07) blood markers for inflammation inflammation of course a precursor to diabetes and heart disease and so many things right and they found that the community that got the trees the biomarkers decreased between 13 and 20% with trees and it's a pretty cheap intervention compared with a lot of the healthcare interventions you might think of on a population level I love the Louisville example because the data is behind it and it is driving more and more investment in trees in Louisville and now replicating this in other places
(11:35) uh because it's not just the blood markers right it's also the cooling ability the cleansing of the air ability the opportunity for recreation and community building in these Public public places that were uninhabitable uninhabitable really before the trees because of the rising temperatures so many of these Trends you could probably see this connection right unpaid care Oh links to longev ity because we're going to need different kinds of Care Solutions oh and if I'm caring for a child and I want to take them outside I need a healthy public
(12:07) space where I can take them if I want to think about the surge in digital health information what is the role in of AI needless to say is is a topic that everyone is is thinking greatly about how do we do that in a way that's Equitable both from a product design perspective as well as from a data interpretation perspective when we think about increasing risks to nutrition security the connections to climate are obvious um but nutrition also relates to so much of our ability to raise our children to healthy adults to keep our
(12:36) elderly healthy so you can see the concept of multi- solving is is not an idea I came up with but the multi- solving idea across all of these Trends is something that I think holds tremendous promise for us in healthcare but in any other public system or private system that interacts with the public system for driving improved Health Equity I hope that this gives you a sense of what is possible from an AI perspective and a climate perspective there are lots of different interventions we might imagine I think again whether it's transparency and
(13:09) ethical use of AI whether it's using AI to design inclusive Solutions whether it's considering the climate implications on the front end of an intervention or whether it's incorporating the climate implications in the implementation of an intervention all of these things we see connections this is the broadest perspective you're going to get this afternoon on health um because it is so much more than the strict Health Systems the biomedical systems that we think of in a Pure Health System sense but I hope this gives you some optimism for ideas
(13:41) that stretch Beyond maybe what any of us do in our day job uh to drive Health outcomes around the world with that I'm going to hand the mic over to Lily and bring up our first panel thank you so much for your attention