Symposium Marks called gift anniversary shows paths for public health

Faculty, alumni and friends of the Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health recently gathered with Tech entrepreneurs and other managing directors for a day full of discussions that concentrated on the coming decade in public health. The symposium of April 29 at the Hilton Boston Park Plaza Hotel marked the 10^TH Anniversary of the historical gift of 350 million US dollars by the Chan family and their Morningide Foundation, which renamed the school for Ronnie and Gerald Chan's father, Th Chan.

Over the course of the day, the speakers dealt with the considerable challenges, which came through cuts in federal research financing, distrust in science and the spread of misinformation as well as high costs and inequality in the health system. With a view to school and the larger area of ​​public health, they examined solutions that concentrated and find ways to use the use of new collaborations and emerging technologies to share the history of prevention.

“Public health is no longer connected to the hip with Medicine, our Nexus is very much with economy, engineering, guidelines, politics and social media,” said Gerald Chan, SM '75, SD '79, co-founder of the Morningide Group, a private investment group. People are much less dependent on their health information doctors, so practitioners in the public health system have to find paths to reach them directly, he said. He asked academic researchers to maintain relationships with industry and do more school to prepare the students for innovators and problem solvers.

“Ultimately, our work is measured based on our effects on public health, “he said.

A school not 'public health, but' for 'public health

Dean Andrea Baccarelli moderated a committee for prevention and health that focused on cooperation between Harvard Chan School, Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and applied sciences. Too much money is spent on “disease supply” without showing enough positive results, said Baccarelli. The hope is that this collaboration can develop innovative new solutions in order to realign the health system in order to prevent people from getting sick at all.

He said that he does not see the Harvard Chan School as a school “public health”, but as a “for” public health and that academies can play an important role in promoting prevention.

The discussion participant ASAF Bitton, deputy professor of health policy in the Ministry of Health Policy and Management and Managing Director of Ariadne Labs, agreed that Akademie can bring people with different specialist areas to tackle major problems in public health – not only to make discoveries, but also to translate knowledge of society.

But prevention is a more difficult sale to the public and the donors than, for example, new disease treatment because it is often invisible, said the discussion participants. “It's a kind of oxygen,” said Bitton – people only notice it if it falls too low, and health problems occur.

In the influence of politics in relation to prevention, Sara Bleich, a professor of public health policy, called for researchers to develop sharper messages. She said when she worked in the government, she was surprised to find out that many political decisions are not managed by science. However, she said that there are often Windows of opportunities to get through the slightly digestible science -based messages from researchers.

She quoted the National Diabetes Prevention Program as an example of a successful prevention program that passed from research on politics to widespread adoption and has been shown to reduce the costs of health care.

The power of cooperation

In a professor of immunology and infectious diseases given by Sarah Fortune, John Laporte, several examples of how researchers and industry could work together to support public health. For example, Yonatan, professor of immunology and infectious diseases, led a very successful cooperation with the NBA to establish a COVID-19 test and monitoring program during the 2020 season that generated valuable data on viral dynamics.

The discussion participants called for stronger framework conditions for facilitating sustainable partnerships between science, industry and the public health sector to maximize the potential of data and technology for public health. They also discussed business and ethical considerations for data exchange.

Additional panels have brought experts from all over Harvard to discuss how artificial intelligence (AI) is already used in healthcare and medicine – including the automation of administrative tasks, the use of large data records and language models to identify potential diagnoses, and the acceleration of drug development by predicting security and effectiveness.

The audience also heard from the discussion participants who use AI to improve the effectiveness of mental health, to recognize cognitive impairments and to enable multilingual communication between patients with limited English and their health service providers.

Researchers in public health all over the world play a role in AI research and application, said the discussion participant Isaac Kohane from Harvard Medical School. “My mission today is that you understand this opportunity,” he said. One main reason for this is that there are probably others who are involved in public health and are less informed about the area and invested in its principles.

The one-day event has the importance of cooperation between academies and industry and in all of Harvard, Dean Baccarelli said in his final comments. “Great things happen when different people meet with different ideas. We learn from each other. We have ideas that we would never have had otherwise. And we put them into practice,” he said. Despite the current challenging climate for Harvard and Public Health, Dean Baccarelli said: “There is also great hope that we can move in with purpose and contribute to creating better days for our school and a better world for everyone.”

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