In collaboration with the One Health One Road Alliance, Cambridge Medical Academy, European University Cyprus, European Health Futures Forum, and IE Open, the Nordic Wellbeing Academy is organising the Danish-Cypriot EU Policy Sessions – a series of health policy side sessions at the IMBMC 2025 in Nicosia, Cyprus – November 6-8.

The sessions will gather speakers and participants from a global network to discuss and develop new ideas. Meet:

• Adam Skali – Board Member, Institute for Human Centered Health Innovation, ES
• Anna Kudiyarova – Director of the Psychoanalytic Institute for Central Asia, KZ
• Belinda Lin – Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park China
• Bogi Eliasen – Executive Director, Movement Health Foundation, DK
• Carina Dantas – IHI ReADI, SHAFE Foundation, and SHINE 2Europe, PL
• Cris Scotter – Special Advisor, WHO Europe, UK
• Diana Arsovic – CEO, Danish Life Science Cluster, DK
• Dr Eva Turk – IHI IMPROVE, HTAi, and University of Applied Science St. Pölten, A
• Dr Ioannis Patrikios – Vice-dean European University Cyprus Medical School CY
• Dr Nina Fuller-Shavel – Director of the National Centre for Integrative Oncology, UK
• Dr Sotiris Themistokleous – Director of Strategic Development Center for Social Innovation CY
• Emma Rawson-Te Patu – President of the World Federation of Public Health Associations, NZ
• Jun (Helena) Li – CEO One Road One Health Medicine, China
• Lars Münter – International Director, Nordic Wellbeing Academy, DK
• MEP Michalis Hadjipantelas, CY
• Nina Sønderberg – National Director, Nordic Wellbeing Academy, DK
• Professor Karsten Kristiansen – Copenhagen University, DK
• Takis Kotis – CEO, Cambridge Medical Academy, GR
• Terry Pirovolakis – CEO, Elpida Technology, CA
• And about 50 other scientists, researchers, professor, experts, and changemakers in the bio-medical conference main tracks

Read more and register (free)

Collaborative creativity at its finest in Aalborg September 18th. NWA collaborated with EHFF to build a co-creative workshop with Natasha Azzopardi Muscat – Director of the Division of Country Health Polices and Systems WHO Europe, Charlotte Marchandise – Executive Director EUPHA, and Stella Goeschl – Young Action Group JA PreventNCD as the superpanelist powering the audience.

In 60 minutes, the audience got to find future strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that should be taken into account for a future strategy, and then our panelist used these to suggest four action items that they hoped the participants – and the Danish EU Presidency – would take up tomorrow to build a new pathway for change. These were voted on by the audience to create a shortlist of five action items for change.

Common Themes Across Speakers

• Burnout & well-being: urgent and systemic.
• Technology: potential but overhyped; must serve both patients and staff.
• Data: better workforce data is essential.
• Inclusion: young people, patients, and vulnerable groups must be part of decision-making.
• Public health: prevention and community-level work relieve pressure on hospitals.

Top 5 Action Points for EU Presidency Action

• Build KPIs for workforce well-being – measure and hold leaders accountable.
• Ensure technology validation – evaluate AI/innovation like medicines (safety, impact, cost-effectiveness).
• Stand up for people with science – evidence-based policies, not quick fixes.
• Inclusion of young people – systematically in panels, education, and policy.
• Stand up for communities – ensure public health and local engagement.

WHO Europe will discuss this further at conferences and events in 2025 and on. The themes will be a strong element of debate at European Public Health Conference 2025 in Helsinki (November), and JA PreventNCD will continue it’s work to tackle determinants, including at a conference in Denmark October 2025.

As part of the One Health One Road Alliance, NWA and EHFF will bring the issue into the Danish-Cypriot Policy Debates in Nicosia November 6-8 as the opportunity of bringing this issue from one EU Presidency to the next is vital. We hope to see many from Aalborg in Nicosia too.

Working in partnerships is one of the most rewarding, most needed, and most difficult endavours humans can do. Building a good relational strategy is a first step, but figuring out if the strategy works can be tricky. Or it used to be! Two new report created by the NWA and a consortium of experts for the Danish Life Science Cluster gives partnership builders, managers, and transformation agents a new tools to navigate this difficult task.

The two reports follows a first report issued earlier this year about the impact of the Danish Lighthouse Life Science. The “Foundation of the Danish Lighthouse Life Science” report describes the architecture behind this collaborative PPP with 400+ members. And in “A New KPI Model for Collaboration and Change“, we introduce a change model with KPIs that can help guide new partnerships along the tricky art of building, expanding, and running a multistakeholder platform towards a common goal.

The key point above all;
You can design collaborative platforms to also generate trust – and here’s a manual.

In a time where trust in institutions and future is eroding, this mechanism of using trust literacy to build new collaborative platforms with strong relational strategies is needed more than ever. We look forward to promote, test, and expand the model much more in coming months and years.

Trust literacy, trust challenges, trust by design, and trust futures – and wonderful debate about philosophy, technology, and strategy for trust.

Find below recording of our webinar February 27, 2025 – or read the summary report here.

A great team of participants joined our event in Brussels January 27th, 2025 to talk about pathways for progress on trust as a tool for transformation in health and resilience in society.

Summary and presentations
Read a summary of the event here with references to further reading also and find pdf of presentations from Diana Arsovic, Lars Münter, and Nina Sønderberg. The meeting was held in Brussels at The Library Ambiorix – on a surprisingly sunny day in the Brussels winter. Participants from 10 different organisations debated the joint challenge – how to ensure better basis for promotion and emergence of trust by and in the climate of multistakeholder collaboration frameworks, that are an essential part of modern ecosystems of policy and service innovation. See a few pictures below.

The quest for wellbeing is as old as humanity. Creating a structured approach requires a civilisation capable of longterm thinking and strategy about the many implications for education, urban design, innovation, institutions, community involvement, allocation of ressources and much more.

NWA has collaborated with Cambridge Medical Academy for several years in pursuing the potential in a knowledge sharing of global practices from traditional and contemporary Chinese medicine with Western medicine and research – and potentially integrating also traditional Mongolian, Indian, African, or indigenous American practices also. Being humble enough to recognise that we still need to explore practices, compounds, and interactions much more across borders. While modern science has advanced immensely during the 20th Century in particular, neither oceans, space, genomics, or microbiomes are fully explored.

To advance the understanding and benefit of global collaboration, NWA participated in the One Health One Road inagural conference in Danfeng south of the historical city of Xi’an – renowned for the discovery of the terracota army of soldiers and the birthplace of the first Chinese dynasty of emperors. The conference gathered 400 dedicated researchers, especially from the Chinese TCM community, but also a small number of European changemakers eager to learn more by integrating ideas and approaches. Lars Münter shared experiences from our work in the Nordic Health 2030 Movement and the Danish Life Science Cluster on the future and nature of health and wellbeing, and the role of trust and collaboration for transformation in communities, institutions, and societies towards a sustainable future.

The Future of Trust? NWA participated in the Tour de Health 2024 organised by Healthcare Denmark to present its work on establishing a KPI model to assess quality and progress in multistakeholder partnerships, especially for mission-driven ones.

The Tour de Health 2024 gathered health care and life science stakeholders from 13 diplomatic missions in Copenhagen to learn from Danish experiences and share their own in trying to work with complex issues in the some times challenging world multistakeholder platforms. The event was a great opportunity to also dive deep into the issue of trust and transformation with both Danish Life Science Cluster community partners (Nordic Healthcare Group, Novo Nordisk, and Lundbeck) and also global partners (Global Health Literacy Academy), trans-Atlantic (Engage Nova Scotia), European (EUREGHA), and Danish (Prescient).

It also gave a good opportunity for further dialogue about the nature of collaboration – gathering also feedback from Canadian Ambassador Carolyn Bennet, Head of Impact at Novo Nordisk Foundation Thomas Alslev Christensen, Professor at the University of Copenhagen Maria Kristiansen, Country Director Denmark Johnson & Johnson Julie Brooker, and Deputy CEO Rigshospitalet Martin Magelund Rasmussen. Find all of the videos here.