Institute For The Future

Rebalancing Eco-systems of Well-being: Follow Our Health Horizons Conference on Twitter

 

 

The next ten years will see resource constraints and global imbalances continue to threaten the well-being of people and the planet, urging us to find bold solutions.  And cities—the nexus where ideas, imagination, and people meet—are the primary place we will see new practices for health and well-being emerge. Rapid urbanization is creating a planet of civic laboratories, with new capacities for our individual, collective, and ecological well-being. On Thursday and Friday, June 9 and 10, we will host our annual client-only Health Horizons conference, where we’ll immerse ourselves in the dynamic, complex, and connected urban ecosystems in which individual and collective well-being will emerge. We'll also explore four ecosystem forces shaping the future: adaptive experimentation, optimizing well-being spans, anticipating health and measuring uncertainty, and participatory peer-to-peer production of health.  The conference will also feature a collaborative game, “A City in Pursuit of Well-Being,"—designed by Director of Research and Collaborative Networks Vivian Distler and Innovation Management Institute co-founder Julian Keith Loren (@jkloren)—that uses our research to create real solutions to build capacity for well-being. For everyone who can’t make it to the conference, you can participate online by following the hashtag #hh2011. We’ll be tweeting live from the conference under the handle @iftfhealth. For everyone who can’t make it to the conference, you can participate online by following the hashtag #hh2011. We’ll be tweeting live from the conference under the handle @iftfhealth. 

Those of you who arrive early on Wednesday, June 8 will have the chance to attend a pre-conference book-reading of Food, Medicine & the Quest for Good Health by medical anthropologist Nancy Chen. IFTF Technology Horizons Program Director Lyn Jeffery (@lynj) will host. 

 

Overview of Thursday June 9:

The day starts with Health Horizons Program Director Rod Falcon (@rodfalcon) and Vivian introducing our new Map of the Decade: Eco-systems of Well-being and explaining how we’ll be exploring its ideas throughout the conference. 

Research Manager Bradley Kreit (@bkreit) will then give a presentation explaining how important it is to think about well-being through the lens of ecosystems, and at the scales of bodies, networks, and environment. 

In two sessions throughout the day, Research Managers Rachel Hatch (@rachelkeas) and Miriam Lueck Avery (@myravery), will present Mapping Ecosystems of Well-Being, exploring the four ecosystem forces shaping the future of well-being and how they provide a framework for discussing our forecasts at different scales. 

We’ve also assembled a panel of insight interpreters, who will step in twice during the day with perspectives on the business case for the future of well-being. They include health care consultant Mary Cain, Dhoopa Ventures President Brinda Dalal and Good Things Health President/CEO Grant Wedner.

Before breaking for lunch, we’ll hold a panel discussion, “Social Production of Well-Being,” about how changing social structures will influence our health and well-being in the future. The panelists will be ITN America Founder and President Katherine Freund, Shareable Magazine's Neal Gorenflo, and Associate Dean for Sustainability at Parsons The New School for Design Cameron Tonkinwise. 

The afternoon will feature an intensive session of the game “A City in Pursuit of Well-Being.”

We’ll close the night with a screening of the provocative documentary, “The Economics of Happiness,” introduced by Ten-Year Forecast Program director Kathi Vian, followed by an informal book reading of Being and Well-Being: Health and the Working Bodies of Silicon Valley by Jan English-Lueck. 

 

Overview of Friday June 10:

The second day kicks off with Research Director Rachel Maguire and Ann Forsyth, professor of city and regional planning at Cornell University, exploring how cities will offer unique opportunities for innovation and social change to support people’s well-being in the future, using IFTF’s recently published map entitled The Future of Cities, Information, and Inclusion—a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

The day will also feature a series of rapid-fire presentations; “Signs of the Future Today,” in which we’ll hear from several innovators whose projects reveal how we can see the future of well-being take shape today. Speakers include Zamzee’s Jonathon Attwood, Genomera’s Greg Biggers, Tonic’s Rajiv Mehta, FireDepartment.mobi’s Richard Price and Frog Design’s Alex Tam. 

All of the previous day’s rounds of “A City in Pursuit of Well-Being” lead up to a final round in which we’ll collaboratively design a response to our city-of-the-future’s well-being needs. 

The conference will close with a keynote address by Gail Findlay, of the London Health Commission (LHC) and a presentation of “A City in Pursuit of Well-being” awards. 

We are very excited about the new research we will be presenting at the conference and hope you'll be following along on Twitter with hashtag #hh2011.