The Conference topic this year is Global Health. As in, how can we capitalize on the list of great things going on in our region, from Gates, to PATH, to SBRI, to of course UW and WSU?
BTW, if you don’t know it, Seattle is rapidly becoming the center of Global Health on worldwide scale. This has all grown organically, some would say “by accident.” But I always think when someone says that it just means that they weren’t the ones that planned it. I say it grew up because talented people executed their vision. And because we have UWMC and the Gates Foundation.
So, recognizing that it is hard to say what should be done when we haven’t wrapped up the preceedings yet, my vote goes to a little planning and a lot of doing.
A little planning: The organic growth in this great industry means that there is little if any central coordination. That is not bad of course. But it also means there’s an opportunity for a concerted effort to coordinate some activities, deciding on shared priorities and building the coalition to act on them. This is an ideal effort for the newly formed Washington Global Health Alliance, us here at Prosperity, the Chamber, the WBBA and Tech Alliance…or some combination thereof (or others too of course). Not sure what the next step is on this, but we’ll figure that part out – the conference isn’t even over yet.
A lot of doing: The other thing we could benefit from is some good old fashioned hubris and arm waving. Credit to Alex Pietsch at City of Renton and others, but I’m going to say we do the following:
Throw the world’s biggest party to celebrate the new Gates Foundation headquarters opening in 2012. By party I mean conference, cultural event and revival meeting all rolled into one. Attendees from around the world, celebrating the opening and looking at the future of Global Health. A world’s fair, almost. (Close readers will know this is a similar idea to one our Tourism and Visitors working group has been looking at for a month or so…and they should probably end up being the same project…but I’m getting ahead of myself).
Second, develop some recurring World Health Organization meetings here, building on the success of Pacific Health Summit and other efforts. Make it the Davos of Global Health.
Third, get out there and recruit. Walter Reed (good tie in to defense by the way), NIH, something similar. Get them to start some research operations in our region, as it’s what we’re already good at, and as Sen Maria Cantwell noted, it’s one of the areas in the federal budget that is “double digit growth” in budget each year.
Like I said earlier, I don’t know where we go from there, but it sounds like a great place to start to me.
