About the Pacific Health Summit
Mission, Presenting Organizations, Sponsors, Supporters, and Origins
Since its inception in 2005, the Summit mission was to connect science, industry, and policy for a healthier world. By fostering substantive, cross-sector communication, the Secretariat sought to catalyze strategic alliances that will produce long-term results and partnerships.
Through formal and informal discussions, our goal was to:
- Assemble a strategic mix of high-level individuals in an outcome-oriented, friendly setting, to form new, integrated alliances.
- Provide new insights on and acknowledge the practical realities surrounding critical global health challenges that help strengthen our partners’ work and strategic direction.
- Engage the business sector as a full partner, putting to use its valuable know-how and innovation.
- Create a foundation for substantive, long-term, personal communication and collaboration.
The main work of the Summit was an annual meeting that convened top decision-makers to discuss how to realize the dream of a healthier future through the effective utilization of scientific advances, combined with industrial innovation and appropriate policies.
The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust were co-presenting organizations from the inception of the Summit through the final meeting in 2012.
A multi-year dialogue as ambitious as the Pacific Health Summit could not have been successful without the support of forward-thinking organizations, foundations, and individuals. Our sponsors and supporting organizations played a vital role in creating this historic opportunity—to bridge borders, traverse new policies, stem disease, and save lives—full partners on an expedition to scale the heights of disease detection and prevention. The Summit is grateful for their financial support and partnership.
The Pacific Health Summit would like to thank the following sponsors for their generous leadership and financial support for one or more of the annual Summit meetings.
Affymetrix
Amgen
The Beverage Institute for Health & Wellness
The Boeing Company
Center for Sustainable Health, Arizona State University
Chevron Corporation
The Coca-Cola Company
Department of Health, United Kingdom
Duke Medicine
Economic & Social Research Council
ExxonMobil
Fujitsu
GE Healthcare
GlaxoSmithKline
Hewlett-Packard
Johnson & Johnson
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Medical Research Council
Medtronic
Medtronic Foundation
Merck & Co., Inc.
Microsoft Corporation
Miraca Holdings Inc.
The National Cancer Institute
Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
PepsiCo
Pfizer Inc.
Roche
sanofi-aventis
Sanofi Pasteur
Swedish Medical Center
Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy
University of Washington Department of Global Health
UPS
Virginia Mason Medical Center
We Work for Global Health
Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects
The Pacific Health Summit would like to thank the following sponsors for their advice, partnership, and critical support for one or more of the annual Summit meetings.
Beckton Dickinson and Company
Decade of Vaccines Collaboration
GAPPS
Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosic and Malaria
The History of Vaccines
IAVI
Jhpiego
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Lilly, USA, LLC
March of Dimes
Microsoft Corporation
The National Cancer Institute
PATH
RESULTS Educational Fund
Save the Children
Stop TB Partnerhsip
The Rockefeller Foundation
Virginia Mason Medical Center
Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association
Washington Global Health Alliance
The World Bank Group
The vision for the Pacific Health Summit originated from observations that technological advancements in Asia and the Pacific region could transform healthcare from a reactive model to a preventive one. The Summit subsequently grew to address the effects of health challenges in regions across the globe, focusing worldwide on innovation and opportunities. By convening leaders from diverse locales, the Summit’s name became synonymous with utilizing global forces for a healthier future.
Our logo expresses the timelessness of the human hope for better health. The character chosen to represent the Pacific Health Summit, pronounced sheng in Chinese and ikiru in Japanese, means “life” or “to live.” The character combines easily with other characters to build hopeful and strong compounds; similarly, the Summit co-presenting organizations, too, envisioned that the Pacific Health Summit would become a cornerstone upon which to build partnerships and collaborations.
In early 2004, Lee Hartwell, then President of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, George F. Russell, Jr., then Chairman of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), William H. Gates, Sr., Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Michael Birt, then Director of NBR’s Center for Health and Aging, sketched out a vision for how emerging science and technology could link with global health policy to transform healthcare. They brainstormed on the need to prevent, detect, and treat illness early enough to drastically reduce the human and financial cost of disease, an intensely personal issue for each of them. Recognizing the lack of a forum that could truly bring all stakeholders, especially industry, to the same table, and believing strongly in conversation and direct dialogue as true catalysts for action, they conceived the initial plan to organize the Pacific Health Summit.
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 Summit. Michael Birt became the Executive Director of the Summit at NBR. In 2012, he handed the mantle to Claire Topal, Summit’s Managing Director, who ran the Summit and managed that team from 2009 to 2012. She now serves as Senior Advisor for International Health to NBR.
Building on Bill Gates Sr.’s strong personal support, in 2007 Tachi Yamada, then President of Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, took on a decisive leadership role and formally established the Foundation as the Summit’s third co-presenting organization.
In 2008, the Wellcome Trust joined the Summit as the fourth official co-presenting organization, and Trust Director, Sir Mark Walport, joined our Executive Committee. Both Sir William Castell, Chairman of the Wellcome Trust, who has participated in the Summit since its first year, and Sir Mark provided crucial leadership as the Summit began its rotation in London for the annual meeting.
Lastly, Peter Neupert, then Corporate Vice President for Health Solutions Strategy for Microsoft, and Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer of Microsoft, consistently provided a welcome private sector voice to the Summit’s strategic discussions. Additionally, GE Healthcare, through Bill Castell in 2005, provided critical advice and perspective, as well as the critical founding sponsorship for the annual meeting.
Out of this initial foundation of leadership, the Summit grew into one of the world’s premier global health gatherings every year.
In 2012, after the Summit’s second run in London, the leadership made a decision to end the annual meeting component of the Summit process.
Eight years after our inaugural meeting, which was never designed to take place in perpetuity, global health was in an exciting new place. Our interactive format has proliferated, and decision-makers across all sectors and geographies are collaborating on all the critical global health issues we sought to address: health technology, pandemic flu, MDR-TB, vaccines, malnutrition, maternal and newborn health, and many more. While we are proud of eight years of transformational conversations, countless new friendships, and exciting partnerships, there is still much work to do—and so much momentum on which to build.
This process means a great deal to us, and NBR continues to explore how best to build on the Summit’s legacy through targeted, substantive programming that builds on Summit outcomes and past themes.
More about the Pacific Health Summit
Learn more and read reports from the Summit’s critical conversation.