Our Healthbox at IAS Munich 2024: Pioneering Health Equity and Innovation

The recent IAS 2024 conference in Munich brought together global leaders in health innovation; among them were the dedicated teams from REACH and Our Healthbox.

This collaboration underscores OHB's commitment to ending health inequality in Canada, ensuring people receive the care they need, wherever they are. The event was a powerful platform for sharing insights, data, and strategies to tackle pressing health challenges.

Dr. Sean Rourke of the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, and vision leading Our Healthbox –– additionally served as one of the conference’s Lead Rapporteurs for ‘Track E’, which focused on implementation science, economics, systems and synergies

Rapporteurs have the important task of objectively recording the proceedings and groundbreaking presentations at IAS 2024. Throughout the conference, this international team reported on key conference highlights across all tracks.

... it's really taking evidence and making it work in ways that are going to reach people in different ways and different contexts.

Sean’s role positioned him at the forefront of capturing and disseminating crucial insights. His work, and knowledge-sharing alongside further collaborative efforts of the REACH and OHB (Our Healthbox) teams at IAS 2024, illustrates the transformative potential of unified, data-driven, and community-centered health initiatives.

His key findings are summarized below. To gain even deeper insights into these crucial topics, please watch Sean’s, and the entire Rapporteur presentations (streaming and accessible just below).

I was struck by the communities. The approach of thinking about community, and monitoring and the magic of how you can bring science and communities together and out front.

Sean’s presentation emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement, echoing OHB’s commitment to working hand in hand with the communities that shape our program. "It's an amazing opportunity to work with extraordinary people from all sectors," Rourke noted, "driving health innovation together." He highlighted the necessity of engaging community-led monitoring and involving communities in implementation science to make interventions relevant and effective.

It's an amazing opportunity to work with extraordinary people from all sectors, driving health innovation together.

Sean stressed the role of implementation science, which is at the core with OHB’s philosophy. He underscored the need for applying evidence in practical ways to reach diverse populations, ensuring equality and inclusion. This approach aligns with OHB's mission to consider generational effects and bring together diverse groups of people from diverse sexual identities and genders, acknowledging these differences in implementing health programs. “In different ways, in different spaces,” he emphasized.

Addressing health inequities requires a focus on equity and sustainability, both of which are at the heart of OHB’s initiatives. Rourke stressed the importance of reaching underserved populations, including children, adolescents, and pregnant women, and the critical need for sustainable funding to ensure programs are not left unfinished.

There’s nothing worse than having a program that you start and can't finish. Sustainability funding is really critical.

Sean also discussed the power of learning from international contexts, noting that while different countries face unique challenges, they share common threads of success in implementing health programs. This global perspective is crucial for advancing implementation science. Emphasizing the need for real-world applications, he highlighted continuous treatment for people with advanced diseases, such as HIV.

He underscored that prevention work, including pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and addressing mental health and other social determinants of health, are critical components of implementation science.

Mental health and the determinants of Health are really such important pieces of thinking about the person, and who they are and how you need to take that into account when you're doing implementation science.

The presentation further, briefly explored the role of AI in advancing health interventions, from awareness to cure, ensuring privacy and contextual appropriateness. AI's potential to help scale interventions effectively was emphasized, indicating a promising (not too distant) future for its application in health sciences.

With the advent of artificial intelligence, and thinking about all steps of the cascade surrounding awareness, and a cure, I think AI has a lot of potential for us to help with the scaling.

Finally, Sean encouraged starting with practical steps to move the agenda forward, emphasizing the importance of continuing to explore these topics during the remaining conference sessions, and beyond.

His call to action aligns with OHB's commitment to drive meaningful change and work towards a future where health equity is a reality for all.

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Watch Sean Rourke’s presentation at IAS Munich 2024 here.

Watch the entire line up of all Rapporteur presentations here, and access each of the summaries here.