Shaping the Future of Health in the Asia-Pacific

The 2024 World Health Summit Regional Meeting held in Melbourne in April provided an historic opportunity for more than 1200 members of the global health community across Asia and the Pacific to meet face to face and explore a wide range of key issues impacting health in the region.

In this session, we will present and discuss the key takeaways from the Regional Meeting, where there was a strong call to put equity front and center. Areas that require urgent and collective action to advance health equity in the region include advancing Indigenous People’s rights and wellbeing, targeting Women‘s Health, accelerating adaptation to climate health impacts and recentering human rights and lived experience in health practice.

Focusing on structural and systems-based approaches, this session will report on the key enablers for achieving equity that emerged as priorities from WHSMelbourne2024. These include co-production and localization, trust and communication, intersectoral and regional collaboration mechanisms and a fit for purpose health workforce – areas of growth and capacity-building likely to be dominant on the health agenda for the Asia Pacific region in the next 5-10 years.

Speakers in this session represent leaders across healthcare practice, policy, academia and government who took part in the WHSMelbourne2024 meeting. Each will present a reflection on the key messages from WHSMelbourne2024 from their respective areas of expertise, followed by a moderated Q&A panel.