Our summits
Health is more than medicine
Uppsala Health Summit is an annual meeting. Participants engage in frank dialogue over challenges and opportunities for improving health outcomes globally.
Each summit focuses on a challenge for health and healthcare where we know that solutions exist, but there are hurdles to implementation. The reasons may be financial, political or ethical. New thinking is needed. Uppsala Health Summit stimulates dialogue from various perspectives, such as medical, economic and ethical.
Past summits
In October 2023, the summit on "Chemical Pollution and One Health: from Reactivity to Proactivity" was organized. 180 chemical pollution and health experts from government, academia, industry, and civil society from different countries engaged in science-to-policy dialogues to discuss the critical next steps and how to speed up efforts.
For two days in October 2022, 200 food- and health experts from government, academia, industry, and civil society from 30 countries across five continents engaged in workshop dialogues and sessions to discuss necessary actions for the transformation of our food systems to promote our and the planet’s health. The summit covered the topic Healthy Lives from Sustainable Food Systems.
In October 2021, our second digital summit was organized covering the topic Pathways to Lifelong Mental Wellbeing, which attracted 800 delegates from 76 different countries from academia, healthcare, industry, politics, and civil society. The summit included plenary sessions and workshops.
In March 2021, we organized our first digital summit due to the pandemic. The timely topic Antimicrobial Resistance and Behaviour Change attracted over 600 participants from 72 countries who joined in for four half days of digital but interactive sessions in plenary and workshops.
In 2019 the summit explored the topic of childrens' health in cities. Guided by the principle of Health in all Policies, the summit provided a meeting ground for urban planners, landscape architects, social scientists and medical experts.
In 2018, the summit took on the challenging topic of cancer and how to make the many new medical advancements available for more people, and how to promote greater patient involvement.
The theme of the 2017 summit was emerging infectious diseases and how to best tackle the threats using a One Health Approach; one that recognises the inextricable link between animal, environment and human health, and the need for different sectors to work together to reduce the risks.
Uppsala Health Summit 2016 discussed the role of different stakeholders in tackling the growing obesity trend among children. The conclusions from the meeting was shared with the WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity, and the open consultation process on approaches and combinations of interventions likely to be most effective in tackling childhood obesity.
In June 2015, the Summit focused on antibiotic resistance, developing proposals for how to implement the WHO Global action plan on antimicrobial resistance, "A world without antibiotics?".
Our inaugural summit took place 2014, with focus on how we can meet the challenges of an ageing population, "Healthcare for Healthy Ageing".