Health leaders gathered for the inaugural TIME100 Health Leadership Forum in New York City on Oct. 22 for an evening of discussion about the most pressing issues in health care.
Experts appeared on a series of four panel discussions, addressing issues like equitable access to health care, women’s health, the impact of emerging technologies, and health policy changes.
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The evening began with a performance of an original poem by writer, playwright, organizer, and educator Mahogany Browne, followed by a panel featuring Dr. Uché Blackstock, author and founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity; Adrelia Allen, executive director of clinical trial patient diversity at Merck; and Ai-jen Poo, president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and executive director of Caring Across Generations.
The panelists discussed the need to create health care frameworks that are inclusive of the most vulnerable populations. “There’s some basic policies in the country that we need to make in our ability to take care of ourselves and the people we love,” Poo said. “And if we do that, I think you can be transformative in overall health outcomes.”
Read More: How Health Care Can Be Made More Equitable
The second panel, moderated by TIME correspondent Eliana Dockterman, focused on global health inequities for women, and featured Dr. Natalia Kanem, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund; Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to health; and Dr. Asif Dhar, vice chair and U.S. Life Sciences and Health Care Industry Leader for Deloitte Global Consulting Services. Panelists discussed how many women have shared experiences of feeling dismissed or ignored by medical providers, leading to a lack of trust in the healthcare industry.
Mofokeng also spoke about a brief she had filed in a U.S. court ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court hearing arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which she argued that restricting abortion rights would go against international human rights treaties. She emphasized that abortion is a decision that should remain between a medical provider and patient and that restricting it sets a “dangerous” precedent.
“Once you take away one right, it’s most likely even easier to take away many other rights, and that’s why we have to see the right to health as the master key to unlock many other rights,” Mofokeng said. “When we protect the right to health, we are also protecting multiple other human rights as well.”
Read More: How Women’s Health Is Global Health
In a panel about the impact of emerging technologies in health care, Shyamal Patel, senior vice president and head of science of ŌURA, and Dr. David Agus, founding director and co-CEO of the Ellison Institute of Technology, spoke about the opportunities and obstacles involved in ensuring that wearable technologies, like smartwatches and fitness trackers, can be adopted by the healthcare industry.
“One aspect is this evolution of the technology and what we can do with it and how many aspects of our health we can understand better because we have access to this personal health technology,” said Patel. “And the second aspect is, how do we make sense of it and bring it into the practice of health care?”
Read More: How Emerging Technologies Can Transform Health Care
Between the panels, TIME CEO Sam Jacobs had a brief conversation with TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year Heman Bekele, a 15-year old skin cancer researcher. Bekele spoke of the importance of involving kids in health and science from a young age. “I think the best way to do it is to … give exposure to people who might not have been exposed to STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] and STEAM [STEM + the arts] from a really young age,” he said.
The evening closed with a panel on strategies for health policy changes. Dr. Raj Panjabi, senior partner at Flagship Pioneering and former White House senior director and special assistant to President Joe Biden; Lori M. Reilly, chief operating officer at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America; and Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center and chief of the Research and Education Service at the VA St. Louis Healthcare System; talked about how the 2024 U.S. election and COVID-19 pandemic have made health care a more central part of the conversation today.
“Looking ahead, I imagine health care is only going to become an even more important agenda item for Presidents in either party,” Panjabi said.
The TIME100 Health Leadership Forum was presented by Merck, Deloitte, ŌURA, and PhRMA.