The 2009 Oxford Health Alliance Summit was held on 16 April in Trinity College, Oxford (coming back to the UK for the first time since 2004), bringing together about 90 delegates from a wide range of disciplines and countries. It was a packed programme, with some particularly innovative thinking.
- There is a full agenda here >> and also many of the presentations from the event are here >>.
- On 3FOUR50 there are some excellent blogs (for example, from Richard Smith, here >>), photos (here >>), and there will be a highlights video and interviews with many of the key players posted over the coming days (see the Summit homepage on 3FOUR50 here >> )
The first session focused on the three risk factors – speakers were Mike Pratt, Susan Jebb and Samira Asma, and it was chaired by Fiona Adshead (now the director of chronic diseases and health promotion at WHO), who noted that we are at a very exciting point in chronic disease prevention, with a real drive for action. Dr Jebb, speaking about nutrition, called for us to look beyond specific nutrients, and regain a degree of calorie consciousness, as weight control is so central in preventing chronic disease.
Picking up on Dr Adshead’s point about action, there was a session on two major research-into-action projects – OxHA’s Community Interventions for Health initiative and the UnitedHealth (was Ovations) Chronic Disease Initiative. Fiona Wong, the CIH project co-ordinator, presented interesting examples of the ‘environmental scans’ using GIS mapping which is under way in the communities in which CIH will be rolled out – and Dr Thankappan, from the Kerala site, spoke passionately about the importance of personal contact, of working with local partners, and of engaging dedicated expert researchers in this important international project.
The afternoon began with a discussion on the polypill, addressed by the four leading 
researchers in this area (right to left), Sir Nicholas Wald, Professor Anthony Rogers, Dr Denis Xavier and Dr Tom Marshall (session chaired by Dr Sian Griffiths). The results of trials so far – for example the ‘Polycap’ trial in India – have been very significant, and the session generated a great deal of discussion and interest among the delegates.
Other afternoon sessions were:
- a discussion between three of the major NGOs in chronic disease – Ann Keeling and Jeya Wilson spoke (respectively, the new CEOs of the International Diabetes Federation and the World Heart Federation), as did Tom Glynn of the American Cancer Society;
- a discussion on the role of industry, bringing together speakers from Novo Nordisk, PruHealth (who spoke about its interest in mining its huge database of longitudinal information on the health consequences of the incentives it gives for healthier living) and Jonathan Horrell, from Kraft Foods, spoke on the Business4Life initiative, with which OxHA is involved;
- a session on trends in spending on chronic diseases relative to other global health issues (Dr Rachel Nugent has been looking at donor giving to chronic diseases);
- a new Global Partnership on Chronic Disease research, which will bring together the government research councils of several countries.
Dr Derek Yach (OxHA Board member and senior vice president of global health policy at PepsiCo) brought the meeting to a close with a summing up of the day’s events, and a plea for moves to draw up a roadmap in chronic disease, focusing on partnerships – noting that we can all work together as ‘you can make progress in realms where you agree to agree, even if you disagree in other areas’.