 What kind of world do I want to live in? I think about this question a lot. For our generation and for specifically my group of people, which is refugees, the circumstances might dismantle any vision of the future that we have. You're trying to rebuild, you're trying to make a future for yourself and then the climate-related disaster come and you start again. It's not about how it's affecting you now, it's about how it's affecting you your entire life. The first step to understand is that we're all a part of it. None of us are going to be left out by the crisis. We're at a stage where if we don't act now, really there won't be very much left. There are generations that will never see certain things that we grew up seeing in real life. We have to start treating this like the emergency it is to achieve the 17 sustainable development goals. We have to go from an intention to a serious commitment. Business leaders really need to rethink how they conduct their business and invest in creating systems that are climate-friendly. The action I would like to see is accountability. Structures being put in place where countries aren't just asked to do something, but they're kept accountable to the decisions that they make. There has to be that strong collaboration between government, between corporations, between youth activists to drive change forward. The world I would want to live in is a world where imagining the future is not a privilege. I want to live in a world where people do not give up on hope. Hope that a positive change is possible. The fact that you're listening today means that you are willing to make a change. Good morning. I'm Nancy Brown. I'm Chief Executive Officer of the American Heart Association. And I also have the honor of serving as co-chairman of the World Economic Forum's Global Health Equity Network. It is such a great honor to be with you today and to be with our amazing panelists. To set the stage for today's discussion, I'd like to take a minute to define health equity, which means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. Fair and just means an equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, age, gender, caste, religion, sexual orientation, location, income, or disability status. And healthy is defined as a state of clinical, social, mental, and physical well-being influenced not just by healthcare, but also by social, economic, and environmental factors. And globally, we acknowledge the interconnectedness and inequitable distribution of health across and within countries. This is so important because health disparities across and within countries have been growing for decades because of unequal distribution of resources. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed these inequities and threatens population health and economies. And we know that this is not sustainable. We have an opportunity to engage leaders in accelerating multi-stakeholder action towards achieving health equity. So today, we will discuss the urgent need for the private sector to prioritize investing in collaborative solutions that address health inequities. We'll highlight examples of how companies are aligning business practices with addressing upstream drivers of health, and we'll also identify actions that leaders from diverse industries and geographies are taking to advance health equity, both locally and globally. And we're going to start today with a panel discussion followed by breakout groups. Then we'll share insights from the breakout discussion and end with closing remarks. But let me start with a few housekeeping items. The panelists' opening remarks will be on the record and made available after the session. We invite forum members joining top link to stay on for the closed part of the session following the panel. Participants are welcome to submit their comments and questions, and the WEF team will follow up after the session to respond. Now let's get started with an introduction of our panel participants. First, I'm delighted to introduce Punit Renjen, who's the global CEO of Deloitte. Asif Saleh, who's the executive director of Building Resources Across Communities out of Bangladesh, or BRAC, and Dr. Ryan Notch, who is the CEO of Discovery Health. Welcome to each of you, we're so happy to have you here. As I mentioned, our discussion is about the urgent opportunities for the private sector to invest in collaborative solutions that address health inequities. So we're going to start by hearing from our panelists about how they're aligning business practices with population health and where the sector needs to go next to meaningfully reduce health inequities. So let me start with a pretty basic question. Asif, I'll see if I'll start with you. What does achieving global health equity mean to you personally as a leader, and why is this a priority to you? Thank you so much, Nancy. Great to be here. And no, I think essentially what COVID has shown us that equity is so much essential right now. I mean, if anything that is more pronounced than ever, that inequality from a health perspective is at its worst than ever, whether you call about vaccine inequity and to also just overall health infrastructure. Countries are suffering, and the frontier markets are suffering. And here's the irony why it's important. I think this is also a lesson from COVID that it's very clear that no one is safe until everyone is safe. I mean, this is something that we have learned at the very clear lesson that the world is so connected now that it's more important that we have at some semblance of equity across various frontiers. And I would say that it's from an organization which runs very successful, big-scale social enterprises. For private sectors, it's not about charity or corporate social responsibility only. I mean, this needs to be more strategic. This needs to be something that will actually also pay dividends as well. So I urge the private sector that to look at this market very carefully because there are people who are here who are even willing to pay for service, able to pay for service, but not being able to get the right service, affordable healthcare service at all. And essentially in various other areas, whether it's financial inclusion through getting products from rural artisans. BRAC has many examples where we have seen that doing good and good business does not have to be mutually exclusive. So it's just a matter of taking a strong interest and bringing in their best innovation and making it easily accessible within the local context and work with local partners to ensure that the service actually gets affordable and easier to access. Thank you. Thank you so much. Very inspiring comments. Ryan, what about you? What does achieving global health equity mean to you personally as a leader? And why is this a priority for you? Yeah, two parts to your question. I guess there's a personal part and a professional part. And I think starting from the professional, from the business point of view, we believe that the sense of impact, particularly in the markets where we operate is absolutely linked to the accessibility, affordability and equity of care. Our core purpose is about enhancing and protecting our customers' lives. And if we are to live that core purpose, we need to do that in a selfless way, in a way that ensures that in this interconnected world, there is equitable access and benefit that affects all populations that are so now interconnected. And as we've seen through COVID, the economic imperative linked to this healthcare access is undeniable. We know from studies that an extra year of longevity contributes an extra 4% to GDP in every population. And so the economic benefits at a societal level are completely undeniable. There's a clear business prerogative, which Asif was talking about as well, is that for those of us working in developing markets like Discovery here in South Africa, the ability to make the products more accessible to, in traditional speak, the lower base of the pyramid or the mass market has great commercial opportunity at the same time as meeting this social impact requirement. Our country, unfortunately, has the highest genie coefficient in the world, largely as a result of our political legacy. And as a result, we do see an inequity of access on a daily basis. And coming to the personal side of your question, as a healthcare practitioner, as a clinician, as a leader of healthcare systems, it is completely unacceptable to me to function in a society where if I fell and broke my leg today, I would have immediate access to some of the best care in the world. But somebody living two kilometers down the road from me, if they had the same injury, may receive a variable intermittent quality of care and certainly not with the same speed of access that we have. So there are these system benefits. There are commercial benefits to companies that can find the intersection of those system benefits. And on a personal level, as a healer, as a leader, and as a community member, we have a sense of responsibility and a sense of value to create in this interconnected world. Thank you, Ryan. That was very compelling. Really appreciate that. And as we transition to this next question, I have a slide that I want to show and it's an outline of a framework that Deloitte has developed for organizations and business leaders to think about how they can advance health equity across multiple interconnected levels. And if we could get that slide put out, please, thank you so much. So when you look at this slide, you will see questions and issues like does your workforce have benefits and services needed to be healthy? Are your company's products and services equitably generating health? Do your community investments support local health priorities? And how effective are you at collaborating with government and supply chain partners to create opportunities for health? This is a wonderful framework and very similar to a framework we've created at the American Heart Association through our CEO roundtable, where we're focused as well on driving health equity in the workplace, where we've created many tools for employers as well. And so as much as we can get these tools and best practices out globally in terms to all of our businesses, I think it will help in our journal toward health equity. So Puneet, let me start with you. This is a masterpiece of your organization. I know in collaboration with many, tell us more about this and tell us how Deloitte is advancing health equity along the spectrum and what is the most valuable thing you have learned? Well, first, it's great to be on the panel. Lancy, thank you for that question. I want to go back before I get to the graphic that you put up and thank you for profiling that to something that both Asif and Ryan talked about. Two points. One, Asif said, no one is safe unless all of us are safe. This virus doesn't discriminate and therefore for us, 345,000 professionals across the globe, it is really important that we take care of all of them and the communities that live and work in in an equitable way. I think the second thing that both Ryan, I think Ryan said it very eloquently, I'm not going to be able to paraphrase it right. Asif mentioned it as well, which is this is not a charity. This is certainly the right thing to do, but it is also the right business thing to do. The reason why we've created the Deloitte Health Equity Institute is because we want to do the right thing, but we also want to do the right business thing. Ryan mentioned being a purpose-led organization, Deloitte is a purpose-led organization, 345,000 individuals, our purpose is to make an impact that matters certainly for our clients, deliver value for them. For the people that we hire, train, mentor 345 of them, 50,000 a year that we hire, it's really important for us to create an impact for them, but importantly for the communities that we live and work in. And it's all those three together that allow us as an organization to be purpose-led to make an impact in the communities that we live and work in. And so let's talk about health equity. And I'll give you an example, 15% of the 345,000 professionals at Deloitte call India home. I'm from India, my mother 81 years old still lives in India. April and May, as you know, was the Delta variant wave in India. It was brutal. For us, from a health equity standpoint, it was imperative that we take care of our 345,000 individuals, but also work with them for the communities that we live and work in, or they live and work in. And one such example is what we did in the state of Haryana. We collaborated with the Public Health Foundation of India with the PGIMS, which is the top medical institute in that state, and with the government of Haryana to create a integrated program to address the crush on the hospitals. And we've seen this with the Delta wave, seen it in the United States. We certainly saw it in India. The lack of oxygen, people rushing to the hospitals, and the spread of rumors where people thought that if they were contracting COVID, it was a death sentence. Our quick research suggested that 90 to 94% of the patients could be treated at home through home care. And so the five integrated level program that we created was first, a command center. Second, leveraging virtual health, deputizing doctors and medical students to provide telehealth to the people that were convalescing at home. Leveraging the ASHA network, the midwife network, in the local rural communities, so that we could provide healthcare to them and they would not come to the main city hospitals and try and overwhelm those hospitals. The third is a three-level field hospital network where Deloitte provided oxygen concentrators so if somebody got sick, they could be moved to the field hospital. The interesting thing was, this was really providing primary healthcare in hard-to-reach communities in rural India where most of the cases were. We also hired advanced life-saving ambulances and in this state, popped them at each of the districts so that we could communicate very clearly that if you got sick, we would transport you to the main hospital. And then of course, clear communication around the disease, the disease management and the mitigating strategy and then we created a playbook. But it was a really wonderful exercise to try and collaborate with the government, with the Public Health Foundation and the medical community to provide primary healthcare in an equitable way for that state. We're now trying to do that across India, starting with the most backward districts. The outcomes were great. 50% reduction in mortality, 90% of the patients treated at home and now we're taking that program elsewhere in Africa. Brian, we're trying to pilot it in South Africa. We will do it in Southeast Asia. Great example of the private sector and the public sector working together to try and get healthcare equitably to a boss community. Wonderful. Wow, very comprehensive and thank you so much for that. I learned a lot by listening to you. Brian, what do you think as it relates to the Deloitte framework? Can you tell a little about how your organization is working across that spectrum and what is the most valuable thing you've learned? It's a very interesting framework. And as I'm thinking through it, it certainly stimulates kind of directional traction along this continuum that they talk about. I start at the organizational level and sorry to be repetitive, but as I said earlier, in my view, it all starts about a purpose. Our purpose is to enhance and protect our customers and our people's lives. We think that that actually begins with trying to change behavior and through behavior change to affect the social determinants of health, the lifestyle determinants of health, which ultimately is the preventative approach towards downstream illness and healthcare management. So our program is built around what we call shared value in healthcare insurance or in all of our products, wherein if we can change the behavior of our customers and of communities at large, get them to live healthier, exercise more frequently and eat healthier, there's a societal dividend for that, right? Of course, you have a healthier population and healthier individuals, but not only is there a societal dividend, to some of the points made earlier by Coonett particularly, there is also a company dividend from a health insurance perspective, you get less claims from healthier people, you produce a greater surplus. The surplus that you produce from that health insurance as a result of healthier lives, you can use to reinvest in incentivizing doctors to run preventative healthcare programs in rewarding individuals and communities to behave more healthily and giving them healthcare incentives. And so this creates what we would call a shared value life cycle. And so starting with the beginning of that Deloitte framework around how organizationally ready are you, I think your fundamental business model and the purpose need to converge around understanding what makes sustainable goals realistic in a healthcare perspective. Clearly then moving on to the next part of the Deloitte framework around an offering, your products need to create these incentives. In our world, we've created a product called Vitality, which is a wellbeing program. The healthier you stay on the Vitality program, the more we reward you with incentives. Took time for people to understand that a free flight or a free coffee, those sound like marketing gimmicks, but actually what they do is they deal with this hyperbolic discounting of one's healthcare status, where we all tend to believe that we're healthier today than we really are. We all tend to discount today's behaviors, not taking into effect into account the long-term impact of our behaviors today. So one wants to make those today's behaviors real and relevant through immediate incentives so that people understand it has this long-term impact. You're not wanting to talk too much, but stepping back from the framework, then just saying that if we ought to think through community needs, ultimately in my view, it all does begin as Deloitte points out with these organizational imperatives. And I hope in my description of how we think through that, it resonates and fits well into that Deloitte framework. Nancy, if I may, I'm sorry for interrupting, but if I may just amplify a point that Ryan made, it's a really important point, and it goes back to what Asif said, which is this is the right business thing to do. Ryan mentioned the fact, the impact that it has on your employees or your workforce. Let's take Deloitte as an example. Doing the right thing in India, the example that I gave you, not only impacted those 15% of 345,000 that live and work in India, 65,000 of them positively and their families, the brand impact that it had within the organization in India and beyond, and the brand impact that it had in the government and business community can't be bought. That is why this is not only the right thing to do, it is the right business thing to do. Yeah. Thank you so much for tying that up with a bow. That makes perfect sense. And Asif, let me come to you. How can leaders be more effective at leveraging their power and influence to advance health equity locally and globally? We've heard some commitments already today, but what do leaders need to commit to? No, I think as I was mentioning that the first thing is the intent and the purpose and the having the curiosity that this is a market that we need to go in and it is the right business thing to do. And as Punit said and as Ryan said, also from a purpose perspective, this is very, very important. And again, I think it will only happen when incentives are aligned. So leaders across all sectors need to understand each other's incentives. So no matter how much we aspire and we scream from the top of our lungs about health equity, the reality is at the end of the day, everyone is going to say that what's in it for me. So I think Punit articulated it very well that it's gonna make you look good in front of your shareholders, but at the same time, all your stakeholders as well, it's gonna, I think your business and brand, I think it's gonna be very important. So it's important for the leaders to really internalize it. And I will go back to just add to your previous point what Punit mentioned that there here is a role for a very big role for social organizations as well because where what happens is that, you have the public sector building infrastructures and you have the private sector also investing in other innovations and infrastructure, but the missing link is the linking with the community because at the end of the day, equity is not just about going to the healthcare, going to the healthcare provider and getting a good service. It's also about getting the right preventive advice as well. And that's where the linkage with the community and the role of the community healthcare workers come in. The Brax example in this case, I mean, there has been some fascinating partnerships in the last few months with Telco companies, with the government where when the government was getting phone calls from the, in the helpline about the COVID and people were frantically looking for information. We partnered with Telco companies as well and they had an agreement where they shared the data to identify the households where there might be potential COVID patients when then where our community healthcare workers went and provided preventive support so that they actually stay in their homes. And there has been many other examples like this. You probably have seen the mask example where we have partnered in changing behavior of people in wearing masks. The largest study happened in Bangladesh and in the countries like us where we have to constantly balance between saving lives and livelihoods. This is where behavior change aspect also comes in a big way where the role of community organization and social organizations comes really, really important. Nancy, if I may again, I'm not an expert like Asif or Ryan in this area, but over the last three months as I've worked in India and seen my mother actually contract COVID and recovered at home, I've read up a lot. And as Asif and Ryan hopefully will back me up, the investment in primary healthcare, particularly in rural communities across the world, but in India, Bangladesh, Africa has been woefully lacking. And that has led to this issue of inequitable access to healthcare. But the point that was being made around the private sector, what we learned in India is using telehealth as an example. It's a way to bridge that investment gap that has been over the last number of decades under invested in the public health and the primary healthcare network and therefore created this inequity. So the point I'm trying to make is that there is a real role for the private sector to play working with public entities and NGOs to try and make access better. And this, by the way, not only applies to India and Bangladesh, applies to rural communities in the United States as well. Well, that's wonderful. Oh, go ahead, Ryan. Would you permission my comment? Yes, of course. Yeah, I think that really resonates what Puneet just said. You know, we see certain trends that have accelerated. They were pre-COVID trends, but they've been accelerated by COVID-19 in healthcare globally. Two of those are digital connectedness and digital healthcare, led by telemedicine, but across a spectrum moving into a range of remote monitoring and support services and also, of course, remote care, care outside of traditional places of care. When you bring the two together in this health equity debate, I do believe the convergence of those trends allow unique and never before seen opportunities to expand health equity dramatically. When COVID-19's second wave or first wave of infection struck South Africa, we partnered with our local telecoms provider, Vodafone, here in South Africa to provide free access to virtual consultations, telemedicine consultations to any South African in the country who required a consultation during COVID-19. So while that was a corporate social initiative through Vodafone and ourselves to offer that to all South Africans, more meaningfully, I think it represents how simple and easy it is to expand access and to address this equity challenge that we face in the world of these modern fourth industrial revolution trends that are now eventually impacting healthcare. I guess as healthcare leaders, we've been frustrated for a while that as many other industries have digitized fast, our digital uptake has been a bit slower, but COVID has accelerated it. And we should capitalize on this for all the health equity benefits that emerge. Wonderful, thank you. Nancy, if I just can add one thing, I mean, absolutely adjust to that from real life examples in Bangladesh with our 40,000 healthcare workers who we very quickly upgraded their capacity, invested on them, made them COVID ready by providing sort of infrared thermometer, the oximeter and also a tab. They were not only collecting data that we were mining in terms of analyzing trends, they were also making the telemedicine accessible for all these patients from their homes. And we had thousands and thousands of coal. And it was very easy. We were building the plane as we were flying it. And that gives me a lot of hope that by investing on this network as well that you will actually get a lot bigger bang for buck in terms of return. Thank you. Same thing in India in terms of what we did. Yeah, Poonit, thank you. I'm going to, we're at the end of our time for our panel discussion, but I want to thank you Poonit, Ryan, and Asif for really a phenomenal discussion, a great overview of what you as individual leaders are doing and what your organizations are doing to assure that we even out access to health and well-being around the world. So thank you so much for that. And we're now going to transition to an informal Chatham House rule discussion and exchange on making an impact.