Transforming Healthcare for the 21st Century: Innovations from the Ground Up

Session leaders

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  Andrea Coleman Speaker

  Founder, Riders for Health International

  Andrea co-founded Riders together with Barry Coleman, her husband, and motorcycle sporting hero, Randy Mamola in 1996. She has worked for 25 years to show that a systematic approach to managing motorcycles and motorised vehicles in Africa means health care can be delivered – predictably and reliably, however harsh the conditions or however remote the community. Embedding systems into local management means assets remain assets, money is saved, people are employed and trained to a very high standard. Andrea’s motorcycle racing life and her work in promotion and sports management provided her with a practical outlook. Andrea says ‘ A practical approach to development is vital. Reaching everyone, everywhere, every day means well maintained vehicles lead to a strong and reliable supply chain. Supply chain underpins all aspects of access to health care for rural communities in Africa. Is this boring? Too much of the greasy hands stuff? For some, yes. But without it everything and everyone is grounded’. In 2013 Andrea won the Women of the Year Award, sponsored by Barclays Bank for her part in revolutionising medical provision across Africa. In 2006 she won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award. Andrea is a awardee of the Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship since 2005, a senior fellow of Ashoka and a member of the Schwab Foundation for Social Enterprise. Andrea founded Two Wheels for Life in 2016. TWFL supports the work of Riders for Health and issues that support access to health care where there is no formal infrastructure. She believes that a social entrepreneur needs to be persistent and resilient. Fortunately, she is both.

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• 
  Gary Cohen Speaker

  Co-Founder and President, Health Care Without Harm

  Gary Cohen has been an advocate in the environmental health community for over thirty years. For many years he worked for an organization that provided technical assistance to community leaders living in polluted places. Over the last twenty years he has led Health Care Without Harm, whose mission is to address the environmental footprint of the health sector and transform health care organizations into community anchors for resilience and sustainability. Cohen received a MacArthur Award in 2015. He is married to a yoga teacher and has a daughter who is training to be a horse whisperer.

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• 
  Rebecca Onie Speaker

  Co-Founder & CEO Emerita, Health Leads

  A MacArthur “Genius” awardee, Rebecca Onie, JD is widely recognized for her sector leadership in addressing patients’ social needs – like heat, food and housing – as part of healthcare delivery. In 1996, as a college sophomore, she co-founded the social enterprise Health Leads to address the blind spot that, while 70% of patients’ health issues are tied to social and environmental factors, our health care system is not structured to address these issues. Prior to joining the Board of Directors, Onie served as CEO for 15 years between 1996 -2000 and 2006 -2017. With its clinical partners, Health Leads creates solutions to equip healthcare institutions – and their physicians and other providers – to “prescribe” food, electricity, and other basic resources their patients need to be healthy, and enabling them to seamlessly connect those patients to existing community resources. From the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to the National Committee for Quality Assurance to the American Hospital Association, key healthcare have tapped Onie’s expertise on how to “operationalize equity” via the intersection of social determinants, population health, and health care delivery.

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• 
  Vera Cordeiro Speaker

  Founder and Board President, Saúde Criança

  Founder and Chairwoman of the Board of Associação Saúde Criança was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She received her MD as a general practioner in 1975 from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. From 1978 to 1998, she worked at the Hospital da Lagoa founding in 1979 the Psychosomatic Department. In 1991, she founded the Associação Saúde Criança, a social organization that uses a pioneering methodology to promote the well-being of socially vulnerable families, with long-term results, proven by researchers at Georgetown University (link: http://www.saudecrianca.org.br/wp-content/uploads/Saude-Crianca-Brief-English-Final-1.pdf). It has also an impact on public policy in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, helping thousands of people through city government. ASC was elected by NGO Advisor in 2017 the best social organization of Latin American and the 19ª best of the world. Dr. Vera is an Ashoka fellow, a Skoll Foundation awardee, Schwab Foundation social entrepreneur, an Avina leader, a member of the World Council of Ashoka, and from 2005-2011 a Board member of PATH: A Catalyst for Global Health.

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