When Her Excellency the Honourable Carolyn Bennett looks at a problem, she does not see a solitary symptom, an isolated voter, or a single border. She sees a root system.

Currently serving as the Canadian Ambassador to Denmark, Bennett’s career is a masterclass in breaking down silos. Before entering diplomacy, she spent over two decades as a family physician, delivered thousands of babies, and served as a Member of Parliament for 26 years—including tenures as Canada’s first Minister of State for Public Health and Minister of Mental Health and Addictions. Whether navigating the chaotic aftermath of the 2003 SARS outbreak, indigenous rights or managing modern international relations, Bennett’s philosophy has remained remarkably consistent: real solutions are found bottom-up, built by the people who live and work in the trenches.

The Flower Shop Philosophy: A Lesson in Intersectionality

Long before the concept of intersectionality became a buzzword in academic circles, Bennett was learning its core mechanics in her family’s flower shop.

“I grew up in a flower shop,” she recalls, explaining how the business relied on a tightly coordinated ecosystem of diverse talents. The designers who styled the arrangements were not always the best at dealing with customers, while the delivery drivers held localized, practical knowledge that couldn’t be taught from behind a desk. “A designer would occasionally go out to the delivery room and try and tell somebody in what order to deliver the parcels,” Bennett says, “and you go, ‘No, they actually know where there’ll be traffic. It’s better to go this way than that way'”.

This upbringing taught her a foundational rule that she carried straight into medicine, politics, and diplomacy: “Know what you know, know what you don’t know, and know who and when to go for help“. As a family doctor, she actively rejected the “super-specialization” that ignored the bigger picture. Instead, she championed the role of the generalist—the person who respects all players and understands how different sectors interact, whether it is medical disciplines collaborating or looking at how nature, housing, and poverty dictate human wellness.

Respect and Trust are the pillars of successful collaboration

To build a truly interdisciplinary system, Bennett argues that you must strip away institutional arrogance and replace it with two core ingredients: respect and trust.

In medicine, this meant moving away from rigid “scopes of practice” that barred capable professionals from contributing, shifting instead toward “core competencies” and mutual trust. Bennett highlights this through the concept of “delegated acts” within her own past medical practice, relying on a deeply experienced registered nursing assistant.

“It is about the ability to observe her a number of times until she feels confident… ‘See one, do one, teach one,'” Bennett notes. This model required absolute trust and accountability: “Knowing that in a delegated act, if she makes a mistake, it’s my mistake… This was a mutual decision, and it’s still my responsibility”. For Bennett, true collaboration requires creating a safe space where professionals—and patients—are treated as true partners, stripping away self-interest to form a cohesive team.

Telemedicine and the Burning Platform of COVID-19

Too often, bureaucratic inertia blocks progress until a crisis forces a paradigm shift. Bennett calls this a “burning platform”. For the healthcare sector, that platform was the COVID-19 pandemic.

For over fifteen years, advocates had pushed for virtual care options, particularly for young people or individuals who frequently missed appointments due to logistical barriers. Yet, administrative and financial systems resisted. When COVID-19 arrived, the impossible suddenly became a daily reality. E-prescribing and virtual appointments flourished because they had to.

This sudden evolution cracked open new pathways for equity, proving that a flexible approach works. When it comes to adopting team-based care or new technological integrations, Bennett’s advice to hesitant establishments is simple and pragmatic: “Try it, you’ll like it”.

Bridging Distances: From Canada to Greenland and Denmark

Now, as Canada’s Ambassador to Denmark, Bennett sees how these lessons bridge the massive geographic and cultural distances separating the North American Arctic and Scandinavia.

Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark (through its deep relationships with Greenland and the Faroe Islands) share the immense challenge of providing equitable care across vast, isolated expanses. Telemedicine and e-health have transitioned from modern conveniences to absolute lifelines for northern, remote indigenous communities.

Furthermore, Bennett emphasizes that Western frameworks are profoundly incomplete without Indigenous knowledge. Whether collaborating through the Arctic Council or conducting research in Cambridge Bay, true progress requires integrating local expertise. Just as Canadian healthcare is striving to embrace First Nations’ holistic “medicine wheel”—addressing the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual quadrants of wellness—modern diplomacy must acknowledge that communities understand their own environments best.

Trusting the Experts of Lived Experience

Ultimately, Carolyn Bennett’s journey from a family doctor clinic to an embassy is united by a singular, democratic truth: the people affected by a system are the ones who know it best.

In medicine, the patient is the ultimate expert on their own body and life, while the doctor is merely an expert on the available tools and tests. The exact same logic applies to a healthy democracy. Citizens are the experts on what is working and failing in their neighborhoods; the politician’s job is simply to understand the levers of the system well enough to implement the changes those citizens actually need.

By flattening hierarchies and treating both patients and citizens as essential partners, Ambassador Bennett continues to prove that whether you are delivering a baby, drafting public health legislation, or reinforcing Arctic alliances, you must always look the people in the eye, listen to their stories, and trust their expertise.

The ambitions of the JA PreventNCD project are huge; Finally being able to significantly build the policy frameworks and services that can fundamentally and radically reduce the impact of NCDs in Europe.  As part of these ambitions, the project is building the EU Consortium on NCD Prevention to act as a continuous, ambitious, and cross-sector advisory body for future public health policies in EU.

Recognizing the challenge for maintaining the long term focus on NCDs in a modern political landscape, the intent is to build a body of experts, institutions, and organisations that can help cover this gap. Following the first great meeting in Brussels last year, June 17-18 Lars Münter participated in the EU Polish Presidency event in Katowice to allow NWA help in the co-creation process among the partners – this was a rich experience of both exploring futures, using process design and thinking, and introducing a number of creative steps to support and increase the ideation during the workshops. Read more about the event here.

The goal is (initially) to build a framework of a future-fit structure for the Consortium that ensures trust, inclusion, impact, and sustainability. And of course to also lead to a powerful energy that can lead Europeans toward better health and EU towards a significantly reduced risk and burden from this challenge.

EuroHealthNet is a key European connector of public health actors, innovators, researchers, and entrepreneurs. The annual seminar is a highlight of knowledge sharing for institutions across Europe in their efforts to promote best practices, build future policies, and to navigate shifting political landscapes.

The annual seminar 2025 focused on the impact of climate change on health and health systems. Clearly the many detrimental effects of climate change on animals, oceans, and nature is well known, but the ripple effects on both specific health conditions and by extension of the health systems built to alleviate them is less obvious yet – but the price in human suffering, money, and time is extremely high already and only growing. Read more about the seminar and programme here.

So it was very timely – albeit not exactly encouraging – for NWA to participate in the annual seminar. And very happy for us also to now get the official proof of membership also!

The International Foundation for Integrated Care is an amazing community for trying cross-sector collaboration and reinventing service design (while studying the process at the same time). NWA had the pleasure of presenting a poster at the 2025 conference event in Lisbon on building a Next Generation Digital Model to support a Salutogenic approach in community care (find it here also).

Co-authored with Eva Turk (UAS St. Pölten), Carina Dantas (SHINE 2Europe), Monika Knudsen Gullslett (Norwegian Centre for E-Health Research), and Gregor Muzak (ZOPS – Slovenian Patients Organisation), the paper focused on how to bridge the possibilities in a digital approach and lived experience with the organizational needs to integrate services.

The event was particularly relevant also in the light of the new MyHealth@MyHands project that intends to build a digital access tool for personal health data for at least 1 mio. Europeans.

The conference in Lisbon gathered hundreds of great experts – it will be a pleasure to participate and hope to reconnect with many in Birmingham in 2026.

The Icelandic government has been a strong supporter of the principles of wellbeing economy for years. Their track record of public health innovation and holistic thinking is second to none. One of the key events and initiatives for this process has been the hosting of the annual Wellbeing Economy Forum in Reykjavik.

NWA participated in a lively and dedicated community of change makers working to implement wellbeing economy at national, regional, or local level – or for imbedding the mindset in research, investment programs, or other frameworks for societal progress.

We are really excited about the launch of a new project in NWA as part of the Social Innovation Initiative.

The project, “Innovative Solutions for Refugee Integration and Crisis Mitigation in EU Member States,” aims to address the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine by facilitating the integration and social inclusion of refugees in EU Member States. The project runs from May 1, 2025 to April 30, 2026 and will achieve this through a multi-faceted approach that includes tailored vocational training, upskilling programs, and comprehensive support services for refugees.

In the project, NWA will focus on guidelines for integration of Ukrainians into European workplaces to support a wellbeing and prosperous future culture of integration.

The other participating organizations bring extensive expertise in social inclusion, a huge network of other European partners, and proven capacity in managing complex, multi-country projects. By leveraging social innovation and promoting collaboration among EU member states, the project seeks to build more resilient and inclusive societies.

The project will empower refugees by providing them with the necessary skills and support to rebuild their lives, contribute to their host communities, and mitigate the consequences of the crisis on Member States’ societies and public services. Given NWA membership of the Network of European Social Entrepreneurs and Innovators, this is particularly interesting to also scale and transfer for other countries and settings.

Looking the the future was the task at the HRH Symposium in Copenhagen April 28-30 at WHO Europe HQ in Copenhagen. NWA co-founder Lars Münter was invited to join both plenary panel, facilitate workshop on potential use of AI to reduce HCP burnout, and be a panelist in a breakout session. This combined presentation of our work with both the Nordic Health 2030 Movement, the Danish Life Science Cluster, the Strategic Partners Initiative on Data and Digital Health, the European Health Futures Forum, and also elements of the new MyHealth@MyHands Projec. In short – this was a great conference to understand mindsets and models.

The experience and the conference had a great energy building on a strong recognition of the need to transform the current method in new practices that benefits patients, staff, planet, and plans much better. Getting to that transformation is the tricky part.

Read more about the conference and find presentations here.

Rare diseases are becoming quite common. Or rather, research has now finally caught up and enabled us to build cures for a long range of genetic disorders and diseases, that would have been impossible to cure or treat just a few years ago. However, the production pipeline for these treatments is still missing, so the cost pr. treatment is high and the health systems have yet to embrace them all.

This was the background for the amazing visit to Denmark by Canadian entrepreneur and patient advocate Terry Pirovolakis that managed to do the impossible in record speed; he managed to find both funding and cure for his son Michael, suffering from SPG50. Having treated Michael, Terry has been on a quest to help other children across the world and also transform the pipeline for a series of other rare diseases.

NWA helped the Danish August Foundation to organise meetings with stakeholders in the Danish life science ecosystem – and also learned a lot about hope, perserverance, new potentials of collaboration between Canada and Denmark, and more.

Read more about the August Foundation here – and about the race against time to help Danish August from benefitting from a cure that are currently just waiting in a freezer. You can make a difference too by donating to the August Foundation. This will help fund this mission and add to the ability for gene therapy and personalised medicine to reach people in a just and timely manner.

The myHealth@myHands project will help address the growing need for a unified data ecosystem across the European Union.With 38 partners across 18 countries, the ambition is strong, the tech is ready, and the timing is right.

Currently, accessing medical records and digital health services can be a challenge, especially when travelling between different EU countries. The project aims to help streamline this process by making medical records and health data interoperable and universally accessible by 2030. In other words, finally unlocking health data for general use by people.

NWA participated in the meeting to both contribute to the overall product, and to present relevant ideas from previous experiences in self-care, digital health, citizens needs, and more.

Read more about the project here.

As part of our collaboration with EHFF, NWA was invited to participate in the D-A-CH Dialog in Vienna March 30-April 1, 2025.

With key topics and workshop, the possible experiences and pathways forward for health literacy strategies in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland was discussed in co-creative space for researchers, policy makers, foundations, and change makers to find ways to advance both data, health, and strategies across the three countries. And preferably across Europe too.

Read more about the event and programme here. Or a short summary by NWA co-founder Lars Münter here.