• Background
• 2005 Summit
• 2006 Summit
• 2007 Summit
• 2008 Summit

Background

In early 2004, Lee Hartwell, President of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, met with George F. Russell, Jr., Chairman of The National Bureau of Asian Research, and sketched out a vision for how emerging science and technology could link with global health policy to transform healthcare. Two days later, they and Michael Birt, Director of the National Bureau of Asian Research’s Center for Health and Aging, met with William H. Gates, Sr., co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to brainstorm on the need to prevent, detect, and treat illness early enough to drastically reduce the human and financial cost of disease. From those discussions emerged the initial plan to organize and host the Pacific Health Summit in Seattle.

With that vision in mind, George Russell and Bill Gates, Sr. took on the combined role of co-chairs of the Summit’s advisory group and provided the seed funding for the Pacific Health Summit. Under their leadership, the Summit has benefitted at every step of the way.

The Summit is co-presented by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and The National Bureau of Asian Research, which has served as the Summit’s secretariat since its founding.

Financial and organizational support for the Pacific Health Summit has come from a wide variety of sources. The original seed funding came from The Russell Family Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which continue to provide annual support. The U.S. National Cancer Institute has also provided strong support since the Summit’s inception. In addition, we have received from strong financial and organizational support from industry leaders such as GE Healthcare, Microsoft, Intel, Coca-Cola, GSK, Merck, Pfizer, Fujitsu, Sanofi Pasteur, Pepsico, Swedish Medical Center, HP, Abbott Nutrition, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, and Miraca Holdings, and Duke Medicine.

2005 Summit

The inaugural Pacific Health Summit was convened by two co-sponsoring organizations, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and The National Bureau of Asian Research's (NBR) Center for Health and Aging. The 2005 Summit addressed four conceptual building blocks for early health: the assessment of health risk, the prevention of disease, early detection of disease, and early treatment of disease. Over the course of three days, top-level leaders from science, policy, public health, medicine, and industry met to discuss the urgent need to create an early health approach to global health in the 21st century. Participants were drawn from almost 20 countries and engaged in a lively dialogue.

Featured participants included: J.W. Lee (now deceased Director-General, WHO), Elias Zerhouni (Director, National Institutes of Health), Andrew von Eschenbach (Commisioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration), Koji Omi (former Minister of Finance, Japan), William Castell (Chairman, Wellcome Trust), Craig Mundie (Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Officer, Advance Strategies and Policy, Microsoft), Dakui Yin (Director, Chinese Medical Doctor's Association), and Louis Burns (President, Digital Health, Intel).

2006 Summit

In June 2006, the Pacific Health Summit continued its focus on emerging science and technology and its intersection with health policy, particularly in the area of “early health”—and the value of early detection and intervention. We welcomed back many of our participants and featured new participants as Lee Hood (President, Institute for Systems Biology), Zuojun Jiang (Vice Minister, Ministry of Health, China), Tachi Yamada (President, Global Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), William Brody (President, The Johns Hopkins University), Vartan Gregorian (President, Carnegie Corporation), and Yu Wang (Director, Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

2007 Summit

In June 2007, the Pacific Health Summit addressed the topic of pandemic preparedness and prevention. Participants gathered for two days of discussion and debate focusing on avian influenza and other threatening communicable and non-communicable diseases. Special emphasis was placed on the issue of developing and stockpiling pre-pandemic H5N1 vaccines. Featured participants included: Margaret Chan (Director-General, World Health Organization), Zhu Chen (Minister, Ministry of Health, China), Sally Davies (Director-General, Research and Development, UK Department of Health and National Health Service), Victor Dzau (President, Duke University Medical Center and Health System), Julio Frenk (Senior Fellow, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and former Minister, Ministry of Health, Mexico), Joe Hogan (President, GE Healthcare), Craig Mundie (Chief Research & Strategy Officer, Microsoft), Andrew Von Eschenbach (Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration), and Yu Wang (Director, Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

2008 Summit

In 2008, our theme was "The Global Nutrition Challenge," focusing on the complex challenge of too little of the right nutrition for vulnerable populations and the rapidly emerging health threat of too much of the wrong nutrition in both developed and developing societies. We welcomed: William Castell (Chairman, The Wellcome Trust), Margaret Chan (Director-General, World Health Organization), Nigel Crisp (Advisor, Global Health Workforce Alliance), Sally Davies (Director-General, Research and Development, UK Department of Health and National Health Service), Victor Dzau (President, Duke University Medical Center and Health System), Julio Frenk (Senior Fellow, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and former Minister, Ministry of Health, Mexico), Kiyoshi Kurokawa (Special Advisor, Cabinet for Science and Technology, Japan), Craig Mundie (Chief Research & Strategy Officer, Microsoft), Jay Naidoo (Chairman of the Board, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition), Koji Omi (Chairman and Founder, Science and Technology in Society Forum), Jean Stephénne (President and General Manager, GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals), Ann Veneman (Executive Director, UNICEF), Andrew Von Eschenbach (Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration), and Mark Walport (Director, The Wellcome Trust).

The character chosen to represent the Pacific Health Summit in our logo, pronounced sheng in Chinese and ikiru in Japanese, means “life” or “to live.”

The Summit logo is a character that is simple and clean in meaning, yet powerful in scope. In the same way that this character for “life” also combines easily with other characters to build hopeful and strong compounds, we too hope the Pacific Health Summit will become a cornerstone upon which to build partnerships and collaborations. While scientific collaborations are among the first steps to be taken, we also seek to form partnerships around policy, medical practice, technology, and public health initiatives.

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