Doctor wants more collaboration in tackling health issues

Managing partner and founder of NovaMed, Dr David Walcott, is calling on the private and public sectors in the region to join forces to tackle health issues that are crippling low-income communities in the Caribbean.

Walcott was speaking at The American Association of Retired Persons’ (AARP) Global Conference during a segment dubbed ‘The Next Generation Leaders Transforming Your Health’. AARP is the leading lobbying organisation in the USA for persons over 50 years old, with a membership of some 38 million people. The association believes that “every person, in every country in the world, should live a long and healthy life”. The conference, held virtually on October 27 and 28, was held under the theme ‘Redefining Health: New approaches for how we live and age’.

An accomplished medical doctor and entrepreneur, Walcott was among an A-list group of health professionals and administrators speaking at the conference, including the Director General of the World Health Organisation Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and President of the National Academy of Medicine Dr Victor J. Dzau, who all provided valuable information on the importance of countries investing in the medical and overall care of its ageing population.

In his discussion with the AARP’s Director of Global Alliances Erica Dhar, Walcott shared extensively about the need to develop a practice of care for the elderly, noting that there needs to be working systems in place, supported by equal access to resources to enable proper care for the elderly across generations and social classes. Named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Walcott has dedicated his medical career to designing innovative healthcare solutions and pushing boundaries to improve healthcare in emerging markets. Walcott was also recently named as a Healthcare Innovation Fellow by one of the world’s largest healthcare innovation groups – Rock Health.

According to Walcott, both public and private-sector groups have a responsibility to acknowledge and try to solve the problem of the demographic shifts that are taking place in healthcare. This, he said, will involve “a high level of private-public collaboration and investment in healthcare by creating programmes that are designed to drive innovation and solution creation in response to these demographic shifts”.

Acknowledging that investors will always seek to measure their return on investment, the Rhodes Scholar shared that it is important that innovation in healthcare “frame its solution in terms that resonate with the investors”, emphasising that the incentive for investors would be derived from finding solutions for large markets across geographical borders which can yield returns, making it an attractive investment opportunity.

Having travelled and worked all over the world, Walcott shared that Scandinavia is one of the areas he admires most in terms of the care provided for older persons, as well as the care for citizens overall.

“The Caribbean and Latin America have some of the most rapidly ageing populations globally and we must both explore ways of serving the needs of older persons and being more inclusiveness in involving them in our rapidly transforming society”, he said.