Going beyond health: bringing different perspectives together

Members of Cohort 3 reflect on how the variety of specialisms and backgrounds across the Sciana Network leads to fruitful conversations

As the global pandemic has illustrated, health impacts all aspects of everyone’s lives. It is vital that health leaders acknowledge and appreciate the impact their work has on other sectors, and vice versa. Sciana brings together health leaders from different countries, specialisms and backgrounds, and it is this mix that helps to develop insight, ideas and new perspectives.

Cohort 3 member Malte Gerhold explained the importance of different perspectives: “In Sciana, there may be people who are academics, people who run a hospital, or work in tech, some are patients, some are nurses. And I found that really made a difference; this sense of bringing different perspectives together. But also everyone having a like-minded commitment to exploring ideas of leadership.

“I’m a big supporter of creating networks that go beyond the traditional circles and bubbles that people engage in. And I actually primarily think that that’s best achieved by bringing people together, across professions.”

Tobias Silberzahn, a fellow Sciana Cohort 3 member, said: “In essence, Sciana involves people who have an interest in and excitement for health care, and an ambition to make health care better.”

Oliver Gröne, also from Sciana Cohort 3, said: “One of the really exciting things about Sciana is working with a group of people, not just from different countries, but with very different backgrounds. I’m used to working on international projects where you might be with researchers from different countries, but they will all have a similar sort of education background. Whereas in Sciana, the group is very diverse in terms of education, background and experience.”

There is also an appreciation that a lot can be learned from sectors other than health, as explained by Gerhold: “I think if we want to stay up to date, or even slightly ahead, we need to think about things more widely. In the UK for example, we need to include social care leaders in programmes such as Sciana. Other sectors that could be brought in are private care, health tech and insurance – widening this idea of health leadership.

“Increasingly in today’s world, someone from a health tech company can affect health more than someone from a health organisation, for example. So involving these in Sciana would really strengthen the ideas, bring different perspectives and increase creativity.”

Gerhold summarised what he feels is the most important aspect of Sciana: “I think the most powerful aspect of Sciana is the people, the relationships that are built, and how they are then maintained, whether that is informal or more formalised.”