Ambassadors offer their reflections as second Sciana meeting begins

There were smiles aplenty as members of the first Sciana cohort reunited in Salzburg on Friday.

The 2017 Sciana group were welcomed back to Schloss Leopoldskron for their second meeting of the year.

The group is taking part in their second four-day programme, which will involve plenary discussions, presentations, and project development work.

On Friday afternoon, members updated one another about their existing projects and what their time had been occupied with since the group last met in April.

The first day of the programme concluded with a presentation on health and health care in the UK - and the work of the Health Foundation.

Ahead of the meeting, Sciana’s Senior Ambassadors Sir Harry Burns, Ilona Kickbusch, and Heyo K. Kroemer were asked about their experiences as network ambassadors, their thoughts on the first meeting in April, and their expectations for the second.

All three ambassadors saw their role as mentors, ready to share their knowledge and expertise with members of the network. From their position as moderators, they also hope to provide challenging input to the group discussions.

Burns, a professor of global public health at the University of Strathclyde, said, “We’ve been around, and seen lots of ideas come and go, and I see us as being able to spot original ideas and perhaps channel them in a direction the others might not have considered.”

The first meeting certainly lived up to their expectations, with all three ambassadors praising the energy and commitment of the members.

“It is indeed an excellent crowd of people with various backgrounds,” said Kroemer, chairman of the Managing Board of the University Medical Center Göttingen and dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Georg-August Universität. He listed individual breakthroughs, such as Babylon Health, as one of his personal takeaways, and said he hoped to see the discussions deepen further in the second meeting.

“The energy and commitment from the members were superb, and I went away feeling excited about the possibilities. The most notable takeaway was the feeling that with these people, anything was possible,” Burns commented.

Ilona Kickbush, the director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, hopes for the second meeting to be “as challenging as the first”.

Commenting on the first meeting, she said, "An exciting group of people came together. People really want to engage with each other in projects. While there was a fair bit of discussion on challenges facing the health system - the message on addressing social inequalities and the determinants of health came across very strongly. I think many participants want to consider this more deeply."

Quoting the three priorities outlined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) – keep people safe, promote health, leave no one behind - Kickbush says she is looking forward to “hone in on two or three key issues that will define health leadership in the 21st century.”

One of the key themes which cropped up during the first meeting of the network was technical innovation and its impact on health systems in the 21st century. It continues to be an issue of “paramount importance,” according to Kroemer.

The second meeting provides an opportunity to widen the discussion on how leaders in health care can tackle the societal issues affecting the quality and accessibility of health systems for all. Burns said, “Too often we reduce ideas of health to the absence of illness. It’s more complex than that, and we should consider new approaches to creating health and well-being.”