PATH Live Forums

Medical diagnostic innovations are rapidly changing the way health care services are delivered. From strengthening national and sub-national disease surveillance systems to equipping health care workers with quick and effective decision-making processes, connected diagnostics demonstrate multiple ways to transform and improve service delivery for individuals and communities. Despite the great potential and increased availability of these devices, decision-makers still lack clarity on their value proposition and are often unable to justify the investment required to scale up connected diagnostic systems.

In this PATH Live Forum, we will unpack the hurdles to investing in connected diagnostics and share insights from global and local health leaders on how to create an equitable, sustainable, and beneficial environment for connected diagnostics in global health.

Primary health care is the expressway to achieving universal health coverage by 2030, but only about half of the world’s population has access to essential health services. Global efforts to expand PHC have been successful, but these approaches alone may not be enough to ensure equitable and sustainable access to high quality PHC. COVID-19 disruptions taught us how to establish more innovative, people-centered, technology-based health care. This next-generation model creates an opportunity to rapidly increase coverage, lower costs, and provide care that is better aligned with what people from diverse geographies and communities need and want.

In this PATH Live Forum, panelists will discuss the future of PHC, the role of proactive design, adaptive and differentiated models, use of technology, and new ways to expand diagnosis and management of health care needs all in one as part of re-imagining PHC.

As the world advances UHC, pandemic preparedness, and health system strengthening, these efforts must include ensuring access to medical oxygen everywhere.
Oxygen access has been a long-neglected element of health system planning—a critical gap that cost thousands of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to surging demand, partners across the globe came together to rapidly scale up access to oxygen for sick patients, but we are at risk of losing this momentum. As the pandemic response subsides, public health partners and stakeholders must ensure these gains are not lost and that sustainable investments are made in oxygen systems for pneumonia, COVID-19, and beyond.

In this PATH Live Forum, attendees will learn about the impact of oxygen access from the brother of a COVID-19 patient, hear from thought leaders about challenges and solutions associated with sustainable oxygen access, and gain new insights for energizing long-term oxygen investment.

Long-standing challenges in immunization systems can be resolved through improvements in health worker motivation and engagement. PATH’s Living Labs works with health care workers to rapidly design, test, and scale health solutions that address such challenges. In Kenya and Zambia, Living Labs partnered with health care workers and—using a human-centered design approach—co-created solutions for improving health worker motivation and increasing vaccine coverage. Ultimately, these solutions are helping ensure more children in these countries can be fully immunized.

In this PATH Live Forum, we meet the health care workers, PATH Living Labs Design & Innovation specialists, and a representative from the Ministry of Health in Zambia to explore their experiences on the process, impact, and lessons learned.

The availability of self-tests for detecting diseases like COVID-19, HIV, and hepatitis C is changing the nature of individual and health provider relationships. These tests enable individuals to take charge of managing their own health and can reduce barriers to accessing diagnostics.

In this PATH Live Forum, speakers will discuss the challenges in making COVID-19 self-tests available, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. They will also share lessons learned from self-testing for other disease areas, such as HIV and Hepatitis C, and explore how these lessons can be applied to close existing access and use gaps to transform healthcare. 

Health care supply chains are the backbone of every health system, but right now, they are not able to consistently supply essential medicines, vaccines, and medical products that patients need. This is especially true in low- and middle-income countries and for patients living with noncommunicable diseases such as hypertension and diabetes. Investments in vaccine supply chains, and the rapid introduction of COVID-19 vaccines, have given policymakers and medical suppliers an opportunity to leverage this expertise and knowledge to strengthen health care supply chains around the world.

In this PATH Live Forum, our panel will identify key barriers to supply chain security for medicines and products needed in low- and middle-income countries. Speakers will discuss how evidence-based solutions to supply chain challenges can lead to better care and disease management for more people.

Despite being preventable and treatable, tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the world’s most deadly diseases, causing 1.5 million deaths per year. But in recent years, TB care has improved greatly, and these advancements have been adapted to support people living with other infectious diseases. Today, public health decision-makers and practitioners have the opportunity to scale these developments further across health systems.

In this PATH Live Forum, representatives from the public and nonprofit sectors as well as a TB survivor and champion for comprehensive care will explore how insights and lessons from TB care can strengthen primary health care systems that put patients first.

Scientists and public health experts have made astonishing achievements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, more than a year-and-a-half into the pandemic, the majority of people around the world still don’t have access to many of the health care innovations they need to prevent, detect, and treat COVID-19. Despite great global progress against COVID-19, far too many still lack access to the vaccines, tests, and medicines that keep people safe and healthy. In this forum, PATH's CEO Nikolaj Gilbert, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (Washington’s 7th District), and Dr. Umair Shah (Washington’s Secretary of Health) held an important conversation about health equity, COVID-19, and the future of pandemic preparedness.

PATH has long-supported our country partners in developing costed investment roadmaps for digital health. These roadmaps help align donor investments to country priorities and ensure that countries are able to lead their own digital health transformation. In this PATH Live Forum, held during the first annual Digital Health Week, we'll explore how country priorities are redefining best practices for financing digital health initiatives. The panel will reflect on the roadmap development processes in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sharing insights and perspective from these experiences.

Following the Global COVID-19 Summit, world leaders have committed to several ambitious goals, including getting 70 percent of the world vaccinated against COVID-19 within one year. Achieving this ambitious goal will require that leaders understand low- and middle-income countries’ unique needs—a point not emphasized enough in global response efforts until now. PATH has made its own commitments in this pursuit and is convening important stakeholders to discuss critical next steps. From financing and political leadership to technology transfer and manufacturing, join this PATH Live Forum to discuss how we got to this moment, where we stand today, and what needs to happen to achieve vaccine equity and end the pandemic.

This PATH Live Forum addressed regulatory harmonization on the African continent, taking a closer look at the preparatory phase of the African Medicines Agency's (AMA) implementation and exploring how it can be leveraged to ensure high-quality health products get into the hands of those who need them most, when they are needed most.

This PATH Live Forum was sponsored by Temptime, a Zebra Technologies company.

Health data have the potential to inform more equitable policies, streamline decision-making, and address health threats. But how data are produced, analyzed, visualized, and used can mean the difference between information that is interesting and information that saves lives.

The public health community and the private sector have been partnering to improve data practices for more effective responses to endemic diseases like malaria and COVID-19. In this PATH Live Forum, our panel of thought leaders will discuss data's critical role in resilient health systems.

This forum was sponsored by Tableau Foundation.

Ending the COVID-19 pandemic is dependent upon all countries having access to vaccines. But demand is outpacing supply by billions of doses, and many countries still don’t have access to the vaccines they need to control the virus and protect their populations. This PATH Live Forum will take a closer look at what has worked—and what hasn’t worked—in the global effort to increase equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. Join our panelists in a discussion about priorities for this pandemic, as well as how to build sustainable immunization systems for future pandemic preparedness.

From diagnosis to treatment and post-cure follow up, people living with TB often undergo a difficult health care journey. Keyuri Bhanushali, a TB survivor and advocate, speaks with panelists from the public health community about how to fill gaps and streamline the journey to build a patient-centered, integrated TB care pathway.

Resilient primary health care (PHC) systems are the world’s first and best defense against the spread of infectious disease—and our best chance of achieving universal health coverage. The doctors, nurses, and community health workers who staff PHC systems can help control the current pandemic and guard against the next, but they need the multi-pronged support of local governments, the private sector, and the global health community to do it.

Former PATH CEO Steve Davis passed the baton to current CEO Nikolaj Gilbert in January 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began transforming the world around us. In this PATH Live Forum, Nikolaj and Steve have a close (but virtual) conversation about 2020, life before and after PATH, and a few of the trends outlined in Steve’s new book, "Undercurrents."

As COVID-19 vaccines become available, the world must have the infrastructure, supply chains, and distributions plans in place to introduce the vaccines at unprecedented scale and speed. What have we learned from past vaccine implementations that can guide an effective, equitable rollout strategy? Join our panel to examine lessons learned from years of experience introducing vaccines for malaria, meningitis, and more, and to discuss how these insights can inform efficient introduction plans for COVID-19 vaccines.

This PATH Live Forum is made possible by the ExxonMobil Foundation.

COVID-19 has set back TB eradication by a decade, but it’s also created new opportunities for the adoption of client-centered strategies that could benefit the global TB community in the long term. Join this important dialogue to learn more about how PATH and our partners are adapting to the pandemic to protect—and perhaps, even accelerate—TB progress in the long term.

Artificial intelligence has promising potential for health innovation, but the risks could easily outweigh the rewards. How can we ensure that frontier technologies move us toward health equity and not away from it? What role should the private sector play in advancing the use of these technologies in health systems? Join us for an important dialogue with leaders from the Novartis Foundation, Microsoft, and more as we explore these questions.

Oxygen is essential therapy for COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe, yet shortages in oxygen supply remain a challenge in low-and middle-income countries because of a web of interrelated issues. Why does oxygen supply disruption happen and how do we solve it? This PATH Live Forum disentangles key challenges impeding access –from demand planning to financing to supply and distribution systems –as well as innovative solutions to solve them for COVID-19 and beyond.