Opinion | A Global Meeting of the Minds at Davos: What’s on the Horizon for Health?

For the past 50 years, an otherwise sleepy little ski resort (Davos-Klosters) in the Swiss Alps has taken on epic proportions and status during the month of January when the World Economic Forum hosts its annual gathering there. Better known simply as “Davos,” the meeting draws together an extraordinary group of participants — heads of states and top governmental and political figures; prominent business and non-governmental organization leaders; academicians and activists; and even a smattering of celebrities, along with the ubiquitous media.

Why does it matter? It is perhaps the only time and place where a majority of the world’s movers and shakers momentarily set aside their differences and conflicts to discuss issues of mutual concern and work toward economic and social progress on a global scale. Looking back to Davos 1992, we witnessed Nelson Mandela and (then) President F.W. de Klerk making their first joint appearance outside of South Africa as apartheid ended. At Davos 2000, the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunization was launched, an initiative that has since contributed to the vaccination of more than 760 million children worldwide.

For a glimpse of what happened at this year’s meeting, I’ll defer to reports from a few on-the-spot observers. McKinsey & Company senior partners Tracy Francis and Sven Smit summarized the proceedings succinctly in the form of key takeaways. For example, they included:

• Speed (and what has also been described as a state of “perpetual organizational upheaval”) is a critical component for superior performance. Leaders in fast-moving organizations reported “2.1 times higher operational resilience, 2.5 times higher financial performance, 3.0 times higher growth, and 4.8 times higher innovation” than their slower-moving peer organizations.
• Pervasiveness of generative AI in presentations suggests that, despite legitimate concerns, it will ultimately transform roles and improve performance in functions like sales/marketing, customer-facing operations, and software development. In the process, it could drive value across sectors — including healthcare.
• “Coopetition” (a balancing act between cooperation and competition) has become increasingly important for organizational success. It requires leaders who are able to focus on shared interests in certain areas despite lack of alignment in other areas.
• Correlation of better women’s health with economic prosperity. This takeaway really caught my attention. A new report shows that, in addition to adding years and quality to lives, investments addressing the global women’s health gap could potentially boost the global economy by $1 trillion by 2040.

In his reflections, Nick Studer (CEO at Oliver Wyman) reported on Davos’s first-ever full day focused on climate and health. As challenges continue to grow and multiply, so does the need for public sector engagement in finding solutions. A recent study attempted to quantify climate change’s impact on health — the statistics are startling. It estimated that climate change could cause an additional 14.5 million deaths, $12.5 trillion in economic losses worldwide, and $1.1 trillion in extra costs to healthcare systems by 2050. In a survey of over 1,400 academic, business, and government leaders from around the world assessing the top 10 risks they are assessing and prioritizing, they ranked “extreme weather events” at number two over the coming 2 years. Looking at risks over the next decade, leaders assigned the top ranking to extreme weather; and risk numbers two to four were all climate-related phenomena.

The invitation-only Davos meeting has been criticized for excluding all but the top 1% of the world’s people, many of whom arrive in their eco-unfriendly private jets — but I believe the positives outweigh the negatives. At its best, Davos serves as a highly visible platform on the world stage to promote international cooperation and constructive activism. And, since healthcare is the biggest business in America, the trends identified there deserve our close attention.

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