National Academy of Medicine (NAM) President Victor Dzau recently attended a series of events as part of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos. The conference, held from January 15-19, included several meetings and roundtables to “rebuild trust, generate new ideas, and create partnerships to advance solutions to the challenges we face.”
Reflecting the NAM’s commitment to catalyzing the health sector to address pressing issues like climate change and its effects on health, Dr. Dzau joined leaders from across the globe to share insights on the crises affecting our future at several events this week.
“Davos is always an exciting time for world’s leaders to come together to examine global opportunities and challenges, and set the course for its future,” said Dzau. “There is so much work to do across sectors globally, and opportunities to connect and align our priorities that are important for progress in areas that are most pressing for us and our future.”
Dr. Dzau spoke and participated in 12 sessions and events: Bridging the Health Divide: Solutions for Equitable Care in Developing Nations; Building the Business Case for Biothreat and Disease Surveillance Systems; Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative Brain Health Roundtable; Financing Health System Strengthening in the Face of Climate Change; Creating a preventive and collaborative healthcare ecosystem by decentralizing surveillance – An autonomous, participatory, and privacy-first approach; When Climate Impacts Your Health; Why healthcare must lead in climate mitigation; Committing to Climate and Health Action; The Global Alliance for Women’s Health – Inaugural Board Meeting; AI in Healthcare: Transformative impact and key challenges; Regionalized Vaccine Manufacturing Collaborative in Action; Sharing is Caring: Solving the Health Data Access Conundrum.
Of these, 4 events are highlighted:
When Climate Impacts Your Health
From extreme heat to poor air quality, flooding and hazardous weather events, climate change poses threats to health systems while exposing socioeconomic inequities and increasing infectious disease exposure, non-communicable conditions and food insecurity globally.
As the human dimension of climate change takes center stage, this panel asks the question: what are the most promising approaches, evidence and data needed to mitigate the health impact of the
climate crisis today?
Speakers for this panel included Victor Dzau, Vanessa Kerry (Seed Global Health, Harvard Medical School, World Health Organization), Shyam Bishen (World Economic Forum), Nísia Trindade Lima (Minister of Health, Brazil), Cheryl Moore (Wellcome Trust), and Bill Anderson (adidas). The panel is viewable at the link above.
Global Alliance for Women’s Health
A new World Economic Forum report, Closing the Women’s Health Gap: A $1 Trillion Opportunity to Improve Lives and Economies, released on January 17th shows that closing the women’s health gap would allow more women to live healthier, higher-quality lives, and provide an unprecedented boost to the global economy.
In response to the report findings, and to bridge the women’s health gap, the World Economic Forum launched the Global Alliance for Women’s Health, a multi-sector global platform that is centered on evidence that investing in women’s health would not only improve billions of individual lives, but also provide a revolutionary economic boon for societies and economies as a whole.
Dzau joins Anita Zaidi (Gates Foundation), Nísia Trindade Lima (Minister of Health, Brazil), Catherine Russell (UNICEF), Elisabeth Staudinger (Siemens Healthineers), Nadia Fettah Alaoui (Minister of Economy and Finance of Morocco), Nakhumicha S. Wafula (Cabinet Minister for Health, Kenya), Per Falk (Ferring Pharmaceuticals), and Shyam Bishen (World Economic Forum) on the Board for the Alliance.
Regionalized Vaccine Manufacturing Collaborative
A global initiative, the Regionalized Vaccine Manufacturing Collaborative, which formed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, will offer convening, catalyzing, and other technical support services directly to regional manufacturing initiatives to enable their success in their recently-announced second phase.
After a two-year incubation with WEF, the Collaborative just announced their eight-pillar Framework that enables regions to strategically assess their current capacity and how to navigate the technical, market, and financial challenges of expanding vaccine manufacturing capacity.
Dzau, along with Richard Hatchett of CEPI and Shyam Bishen of the World Economic Forum, co-chairs this collaborative. Members of the Steering Committee include Jeremy Farrar (WHO), Seth Berkley (Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance), John Nkengasong (U.S. Department of State), and others. Click here for more information about the recent work of the RVMC.
AI in Healthcare: Transformative impact and key challenges
Dzau spoke at the WEF Health Governors Policy Forum on the potential of AI to transform the health care industry across sectors. Other speakers included Tedros Ghebreyesus (World Health Organization), Nísia Trindade Lima (Health Minister of Brazil), Geoff Martha (Medtronic), Vasant Narasimhan (Novartis), Gianrico Farrugia (Mayo Clinic).
For more information, please contact [email protected].
