On May 1, leaders from healthcare, public health, academia, government, and industry gathered at Bryant University for the fourth annual Healthcare Summit. Organized around the theme “Public Health: Policies, Programs, and Promises,” the day-long event focused on finding solutions for rebuilding and strengthening healthcare systems with equity at the center.
In her opening remarks, Kirsten Hokeness, Ph.D., director of Bryant’s School of Health and Behavioral Sciences, noted that the infrastructure Americans have long relied on to protect population health is, and has been, under extraordinary strain.
“Federal agencies are being reshaped at a rapid pace, data systems are being challenged, and coverage gaps are widening at a time when chronic disease, behavioral health crises, and an aging health population are placing even greater demands on a very fragile system,” said Hokeness.
The summit’s theme, stated Bryant University President Ross Gittell, Ph.D., reflects an understanding that improving health outcomes requires alignment spanning systems, policy, and practice — as well as innovation, infrastructure improvements, data, and people who are well-qualified to serve.
“The challenges facing public health are complex, but so are the opportunities,” said Gittell. “The conversations you will have today across sectors, across disciplines, and across experiences are exactly the kind that will help move things forward.”
Current state of public health
Morning keynote speaker Scott Rivkees, MD, a professor of practice and the acting dean of education at Brown University’s School of Public Health, discussed the difference between public health and healthcare, the state and federal government’s roles in public health, and how public health sentiments have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We're in a situation where, coming out of the pandemic and coupled with an attack on experts, there's falling trust in public health and government agencies,” said Rivkees.
To combat this, he argued, the messaging around public health needs to change — and a good place to start would be to focus on our shared responsibility to one another.
“One thing we can start talking about is the message of the greater good, because there’s this call for personal freedom: it's all about me; it's not about you,” said Rivkees. “This is one of the reasons why we're seeing vaccination going down and we're not trusting the experts anymore.”
Following Rivkees’ talk, a morning panel featuring representatives from Brown University Health, CVS Health, the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH), and ITO Health, explored cross-sector collaboration within healthcare’s complex landscape — touching on everything from structural barriers to what intentional collaboration requires.
Sandra Powell, RIDOH’s deputy director, suggested that fragmentation in the healthcare space, specifically the misalignment of incentives across different sectors, posed a formidable obstacle.
“Healthcare is still largely organized around siloed payment models, disconnected data systems, and competing priorities between providers, payers, and healthcare organizations,” said Powell. “Collaboration is something we engineer around the system, not something that the system naturally enables, and it’s the patients who absorb the friction.”
Preparing the future workforce
After a mid-morning talk from Healthcare Summit sponsor CODAC Behavioral Healthcare where President and CEO Linda Hurley shared her company’s efforts to create a more integrated care system, attendees took part in breakout sessions on subjects ranging from how AI is transforming pathology and biomedical research to technology solutions for today’s biggest public health challenges.
In a session on pediatric anxiety and OCD, Braver Co-founder and CEO Brady Case, MD, and Co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer Abbe Garcia, Ph.D., shared how community collaboration has been key to their company’s launch and ultimate success — from developing and testing their pediatric anxiety and OCD model in Bradley Hospital and the Brown Psychiatry and Human Behavior’s Pediatric Anxiety Research Center to expanding access for families through the help of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island and Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island.
Explaining how most children with anxiety or OCD are never treated, Case said that exposure therapy, which involves breaking the avoidance cycle, is one of the most effective treatments — and that implementing that treatment as early as possible is key.
“We are definitely able to catch kids who need help early, but we are working on getting that even earlier,” said Garcia, noting that they are working to build relationships with schools and are looking to scale their business by focusing on workforce development among college students and clinical training programs.
Bryant University Provost and Chief Academic Officer Rupendra Paliwal, Ph.D., echoed those thoughts on the evolving healthcare workforce in his remarks, and the university’s efforts to prepare future healthcare leaders.
“At Bryant, we believe we need graduates who can think across boundaries. We need graduates who understand data but also people. We need graduates who can use technology but also exercise judgement. We need graduates who can innovate but also listen,” said Paliwal.
Today’s advancements, tomorrow’s opportunities
The afternoon’s sessions continued conversations on innovation and reinvention, including a moderated discussion of bold solutions for the state’s greatest health challenges and a talk led by Healthcare Summit sponsor Organogenesis on regenerative medicine solutions.
Delivering the afternoon keynote, Nahid Bhadelia, MD, spoke about AI and disease tracking. The founding director of Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases (BEACON), Bhadelia explained that there is a growing risk of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases — some of which are coming about in ways even experts did not expect.
“Some of this is partly because of climate change, which is making it possible for many more pathogens to exist in parts of the world that they didn’t used to before,” said Bhadelia, adding that surveillance is an important part of keeping such diseases in check and that large language models and AI are valuable assets as they are good at integrating different types of data and looking for patterns.
Rhode Island Department of Health Director Jerome Larkin, MD, spoke about Rhode Island’s public health landscape and shared the work the department is doing. This includes having successfully managed the transition of Our Lady of Fatima Hospital and Roger Williams Medical Center to new ownership to stabilize the two entities, having recently rolled out a statewide lead registry law for landlords to ensure they’re providing safe housing, and making progress on combating the opioid epidemic.
School of Health and Behavioral Sciences’ Assistant Director Joseph Trunzo, Ph.D., concluded the summit by expressing his gratitude to both the speakers and attendees for their eagerness to address difficult challenges together.
“The energy in the room during the networking and breakouts where people are talking with folks and exchanging business cards — that's the essence of what this summit is about,” said Trunzo.