Aspen Ideas: Health returns to the Rocky Mountains from June 20-23, 2024; media invited to register now.
Aspen, CO, and Washington, DC, November 17, 2023 – Organizers of Aspen Ideas: Health this week shared more information on programming for next summer’s event, which takes place June 20-23, 2024. The annual gathering on the Aspen Institute’s Colorado campus opens the Aspen Ideas Festival, and brings together more than 1000 leading healthcare and public health practitioners, researchers, business leaders, policymakers, advocates, artists, and journalists to engage in deep dialogue to elevate and accelerate bold approaches to better health for all.
Passes for Aspen Ideas: Health are on sale now, with an early bird discount of 20% when passes are purchased before December 31, 2023. Members of the media who plan on covering Aspen Ideas: Health are also invited to apply for press credentials to attend.
Now in its eleventh year, Aspen Ideas: Health’s 2024 programming will be designed around seven timely and thought-provoking themes that speak to this unique moment in health, medicine, and science. Attendees will have their choice of 60+ sessions across these tracks.
- Genomic Revolution: Evolving knowledge of the human genome, the promise of gene therapy, the interplay between genes and the microbiome, and the potential of personalized care are changing the face of medicine. But genetic screening and gene editing raise profound ethical questions about privacy, informed consent, accuracy, discrimination, ownership, and control.
- Psyched about Mental Health: Worldwide, 25 percent of the population, including tens of millions of children, lives with diagnosable mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and behavioral disorders. But there is hope in growing knowledge of the brain, novel treatment approaches, and restructured systems of care.
- Boomers to Zoomers: Thriving at Any Age: Our attitudes, habits, pleasures, and responsibilities shift across the generations, influencing the health challenges we face and how we respond to them. Yet shared threads also connect us across time. At any age, our choices influence longevity, hormones alter our moods, loneliness is a threat, and the demands of family complicate our lives.
- Healthcare Dollars and Sense: The United States spends $4.3 trillion on health care. Venture capitalists are pursuing the next big thing, pharmaceutical companies are developing pathbreaking therapeutics, and hospital systems are consolidating. Meanwhile, new care delivery models and the digital revolution are shaking up the industry. But workforce issues, escalating prices, drug shortages, medical debt, inequitable access to care, and tension over intellectual property loom as barriers to the common goal of identifying health-promoting investments.
- Trendy or Transformational? Vaccines for cancer, lab-grown organs, artificial wombs, evidence-based integrative medicine, novel approaches to obesity and addiction, and other breakthroughs and technologies could have profound impacts on people’s lives. As we pursue innovation, rethink social norms, and accelerate AI, we need to ask hard questions about what works and what is ethical and equitable. Triumphs, surprises, disappointments, and hard choices are certain to accompany the quest for the health care of tomorrow.
- One Health: People, Animals, Planet: The recognition that all things are connected is at once a scientific principle and a philosophical touchstone. Understanding that caring for one means caring for all provides the framework for preserving biodiversity, promoting regenerative agriculture, using food as medicine, combatting infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance, and tackling climate change.
- Voices and Viewpoints: With the presidential election looming, global alliances shifting, clinical advances growing at a breakneck pace, and the worst of the COVID pandemic behind us, 2024 is certain to be a year of action and change. Leading thinkers and doers, seers and trailblazers, offer their insights about what lies ahead and what it means for our health.
Aspen Ideas: Health will announce speakers and additional programming details in the coming months. With more than 150 speakers set to attend, the agenda will feature one-on-one interviews, panel discussions, live podcast recordings, and book talks, alongside morning yoga, nature hikes, and cultural offerings.
The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit organization whose purpose is to ignite human potential to build understanding and create new possibilities for a better world. Founded in 1949, the Institute drives change through dialogue, leadership, and action to help solve society’s greatest challenges. It is headquartered in Washington, DC and has a campus in Aspen, Colorado, as well as an international network of partners. For more information, visit www.aspeninstitute.org.
###