After spending time with the CUNY Public Health team of innovators and entrepreneurs last week in Harlem, NYC I was taken aback by the energy across the school, so vibrant, diverse and engaging. A school wanting to be relevant, contemporary and emergent – able to provide some of the best thinkers, innovators and innovation, and activists in public health possible.

See 2 minute video below from Professor Terry TK Huang, PhD, MPH, MBA. Professor and Chair, Department of Health Policy and Management and Director, Center for Systems and Community Design at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.

My take out is that our future calls for the following capabilities in population health being:

• Entrepreneurial
• Financially and economically, and politically savvy – able to understand how the financial and political system, and economy works:-
• Agile and adaptive
• Bold and disruptive
• Curators and narrators
• Driven by purpose and social impact
• Persistent
• Brokers and negotiators
• Community organisers and networkers.

This is the only way we will be seated at the table, a table we can no longer be excluded from if health and wellbeing is to be impacted and we have any hope of creating a new social market for health and wellbeing outcomes in Australia.

Shelley Bowen

Health Futures Australia

Extra Resources:

http://cuny.is/systemschange