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Resilience In A Changing World: Alejandro Jadad & Tamen Jadad-Garcia
October 11, 2023 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
*This talk is hybrid (in-person & remote). Capacity is limited. Please register ahead of time.
About Overcoming the Self-Destructive Force: The Key When Designing for Societal Resilience
How come being aware of the healthy choices that should be made, 72% of people admit to having at least one avoidable risk factor or unhealthy behavior such as insufficient sleep, physical inactivity, smoking and excessive drinking?
Why is it that by the second week of February, 80% of people have failed to meet their New Year’s resolutions?
After over 2,000 years of dealing with pandemics, why are humans still unable to manage them effectively?
Why is humanity exacerbating the risks of climate change, pollution, uncontrolled artificial intelligence and weapons of mass destruction, despite the warnings?
There is a hidden human factor underlying these questions, which is also fueling multiple existential threats simultaneously, and might even be their root cause. We call it the Self-Destructive Force.
If we want to design a resilient society, and create products and services for the benefit of humanity or our ecosystems, we need to face and tackle this human factor swiftly. We must learn how to recognize it, and notice what is invisible or hidden in plain sight. We also have to update our beliefs and practices, to reimagine, with audacity, what should be done to achieve meaningful lasting impact.
About the Speakers
Dr. Alejandro (Alex) Jadad
Alex is a physician, scholar, innovator, entrepreneur and philosopher. He leads initiatives with heads of state, multinational companies, entrepreneurs and scientists from around the planet, accompanying them in periods of transition and maximum uncertainty.
He has a doctorate in philosophy and clinical medicine from the University of Oxford, and honorary doctorates in law and in arts. He is one of the pioneers of evidence-based decision making, and the use of “big data” and digital resources to promote health and well-being.
He founded the Centre for Digital Therapeutics, a simulator of the future of health and medicine, at the University of Toronto, where he held the Rose Family Chair in Supportive Care and the Canada Research Chair in eHealth Innovation, was a full professor, and Director of the Institute for Global Health Equity and Innovation, in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He led the global conversation that generated a new definition of health—as the ability to adapt—supported by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which is transforming health care.
He is the creator of the Jadad Scale, the most widely used tool to assess the quality of clinical trials, and the author of 12 books and hundreds of scientific publications. He is a member of the global Coalition for Public Health Leadership, selected from 5 million experts worldwide by the World Federation of Public Health Associations, to respond to the existential threats to humanity in the 21st century.
Tamen Jadad-Garcia
Tamen is a serial entrepreneur, researcher and bestselling author who creates data- driven products and leads strategic projects for Fortune 100 and 500 companies focused on enhancing performance, productivity and profitability, and optimizing the levels of resilience, engagement, health and well-being of their teams.
She is currently co-founder and CEO of Vivenxia, a health venture studio based in Beverly Hills, California, that supports large organizations to achieve accelerated growth through innovative business development; strengthens startups to maximize their success; and builds its own businesses focused on health and the disruptive use of cutting-edge digital technologies.
She is the author of scientific articles published in BMJ and JMIR, and books on various topics, ranging from longevity, digital health, love, the future of health, the concept of Toxic Stress Load (TSL) and end-of-life care.
In 2023, she co-authored the bestselling book Healthy No Matter What: How Humans Are Hardwired to Adapt, published by Penguin Random House, selected as a notable work by McKinsey and Fortune.
She has also written for TIME magazine.
About Resilience In A Changing World
The near future is clarifying itself. Over the coming decades, life will change as we know it on planet Earth. From climate instability to culture change, plagues of misinformation to global pandemics, human society faces more threats than at any other time in our history. At the same time, humanity is newly equipped to adapt, with emerging tools like artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and social innovation that have the power to reverse the narrative of impending global disruption. The time is now for us to integrate these powerful new methods – to intentionally design a more Just and Resilient future together.
The Resilience In A Changing World series will invite speakers to speculate on how we get from here to there, from our current inflection point to habitable futures where both our people and planet thrive amidst increasing uncertainty and change.