Issue 41
 

• From the Desk of Dr. Andrea Feigl
• Careers at HFI
• Events
• Resources
• Please consider supporting HFI's life-saving work today!

From the Desk of Dr. Andrea Feigl  

Four years ago, HFI held its inaugural event on the sidelines of World Health Assembly 2019, where we addressed how to catalyze political and global action for NCD financing. Our panelists (Dr. Ilona Kickbusch, Dr. Kibachio Joseph Mwangi MD, PhD., Christoph Benn, and Arnaud Bernaert, to name a few), highlighted the need for greater political action, financing, and advocacy to address the global epidemic of non-communicable diseases.

It’s been four years since then, and I’m so proud and humbled about how far the Institute has come. Our growth was even more evident to me while we were in Geneva, attending this year’s World Health Assembly.

Over the week-long event, we met with partners and friends (both old and new) to discuss getting better at measuring health impact and financing chronic disease equitably with universal healthcare. I attended events hosted by organizations such as UHC2030, IFPMA, Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, Novartis, NCD Alliance, Access Accelerated, The Global Surgery Foundation, and Alzheimer's Disease International, among others.

I was also able to have incredible conversations with people like Alison Cox, Geoffrey So, Johanna Ralston, Nick Banatvala, Bente Mikkelsen, Ann Aerts, Peter Singer, and John-Arne Røttingen, just to name a few.

I also had the great privilege of meeting Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the fearless leader of the World Health Organization, who endorsed the key messages of the WHO Council of the Economics of Health for All, which emphasize that we need to focus on the quality of finance for health as much as the quantity of finance.

Most importantly, HFI partnered with Baraka Impact Finance for a panel discussion entitled “Catalyzing Private Capital for Health Innovation in Emerging Economies.” The panelists (myself, along with James Bair, Carolina Batista MD, Stefan Wilhelm, Peter Beyer, Héctor Pourtalé, and Luisa Bernal) examined how emerging market needs are being addressed and explored opportunities to further accelerate capital allocation. You can watch our conversation below.

#HealthForAll was the key theme of this year’s World Health Assembly, and the World Health Organization really kept true to it. It was back-to-back meetings, events, speakers, and networking in pursuit of this mission. I’m proud to say that our team shares this mission with such an inspiring and world-changing group of people.