The 2019 d.health Summit, organized by the University of Rochester and taking place this June in Boston, will address the social determinants of health—non-medical factors such as economic security, education, physical environment, employment, social support networks, and access to health care. These forces are essential to improving well-being and reducing health disparities.
“These social factors have an enormous impact on healthy aging, but they seem to be rarely addressed by the typical geriatric clinical care systems for our senior population,” says Avi Seidmann, Xerox Professor of Computers and Information Systems and Operations Management at the Simon Business School and one of the d.health Summit cochairs. “The 2019 d.health Summit will address and showcase some innovative technologies aimed at reducing loneliness, increasing social connectedness, and providing effective home monitoring.”
Now in its fifth year, the d.health Summit will convene more than 200 leaders from across health care, advocacy, technology, and policy on Tuesday, June 11 in Boston. The program aims to improve understanding of the social determinants of health, highlight breakthrough initiatives and emerging partnerships, introduce disruptive technologies, and inspire solutions.
“By any measure, the social determinants of health are far more important factors in an individual’s and certainly a society’s health than anything that my medical colleagues and I do,” says Ray Dorsey, cochair of the d.health Summit and director of the University of Rochester’s Center for Health + Technology.
Keynote speakers for the summit include:
- Alexandra Drane, an advocate for health and wellness, who will share ideas to help people live happier, healthier lives.
- Sean Duffy, CEO of Omada Health, who will detail the successes and lessons learned from building a startup that addresses chronic disease.
- Donald Berwick, a former administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who will share his perspectives on improvements that can be made to the health care system to provide quality care that addresses the social determinants of health.
The roster of d.health speakers includes prominent leaders from the AARP Foundation, Alignment Healthcare, Cityblock Health, Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Kaiser Health News, Meals on Wheels America, MIT, Optum, Pfizer, StartUp Health, and West Health, as well as leaders from Israel to give a global perspective on these issues.
A pre-summit event, titled Transforming the Way We Care, will be held at AGENCY-CIC headquarters in Cambridge on Monday, June 10. Cohosted by AGENCY and the Massachusetts eHealth Institute, the event will focus on identifying key opportunities for the digital health industry to support the unique challenges of informal caregivers. For the third consecutive year, the d.health Summit will be cohosted by West Health, a nationally recognized nonprofit organization dedicated to enabling seniors to successfully age in place. The 2019 d.health Innovation Expo will showcase innovative products and technologies from across the globe. Among them are select startups from AARP Innovation Labs, including Pillo Health, Folia Health, and Let’s Be Well. In addition, Kaiser Health News editor-in-chief Elisabeth Rosenthal will have a book signing for her New York Times best-seller, An American Sickness.
Visit the d.health Summit website for more information and follow on Twitter @dhealth2019 or #dhealth2019.
