The document discusses how innovation in public health can help address issues like disease tracking, prevention, treatment, and access. However, approaches to innovation can also create inequities if they are not designed with the needs of all populations in mind. Innovators, researchers, policymakers, and investors all have roles to play in promoting equitable innovation. This includes truly understanding community needs, partnering with communities, considering social determinants of health, and incentivizing innovations that improve health outcomes for underserved groups.

1. Can innovation create the
systemic shifts for a healthy,
equitable global future?
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)
At “A Year of COVID-19” Hosted By The University of Waterloo

2. •Why not?
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

3. What comes to mind when
you think about innovating in
public health?
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

4. Innovations create a multiplier effect
in problem solving
• In investigating health issues e.g. approaches to
disease tracking and forecasting
• In preventing diseases e.g. water purification, food
safety, vaccines
• In addressing existing diseases e.g. drugs and
therapies
• In improving access e.g. business models, design
considerations, technological tools, advocacy tools,
policy levers to improve affordability, accessibility or
availability. Underestimated but crucial for improving
equity - Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

5. COVID-19 innovation lifecycle
• Disease investigation e.g. drive-through testing
stations in Nigeria, affordable testing kits in Senegal
• Preventive solutions e.g. culturally appropriate public
service announcements in Uganda, automated washing
stations in Ghana
• Therapeutic solutions e.g. vaccines, digital healthcare
• Access-related innovations: cold chains for vaccine
storage, repurposing of factories for mask production
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

6. But approaches to innovation
can also create inequities…
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

7. An example from history
• Nkengasong (2020) notes that anti-retroviral drugs for
HIV/AIDS entered the market mid 1990s
• In the next ten years were being used in high income
countries while millions of patients were dying in African
countries because they were too expensive
• Required funding partnerships with a focus on access
to move from drug creation to drug availability
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

8. The gaps are still with us today e.g. COVID-19
innovation
• Gaps in evidence use: language, trust, reach
• Gaps in use of preventive interventions– affordability of
diagnostics and protective equipment, feasibility of distancing
for frontline workers, access to digital health tools, access to
sanitary living conditions for unhoused populations
• Gaps in vaccine use – storage? distribution networks? funding?
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

9. Communities are not starting from the same
baseline.
• Inequities in drivers of “pre-existing conditions”
• There is a disconnect between “pre-existing
conditions” & pre-existing living conditions
• Inequities in distribution of healthy food,
healthcare, housing, green & clean environments,
safe active transport

10. How then do we create equitable innovation?
- Thoughts for innovators, researchers, policymakers and
investors
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

11. For innovators who are
focused on health impact…
• Where are the real gaps? Innovations are often designed for those
who can afford them not those who need them the most
• Testing assumptions to uncover features of the context that should be
incorporated in designing effective solutions
• Often requires innovative business & financing models & pairing with
foundational infrastructure e.g. electricity, internet, use of lay workers
• A lot of innovation happens in the frontlines and is already being led
by communities. Moving from viewing communities as recipients to
valuable partners in defining the problem & solution space
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

12. For researchers aiming
towards health impact…
Normalize research that
engages diverse actors
in articulating problems
and solutions and
bridging gaps in
evidence development &
use
Normalize integrating
lens on pre-existing
inequities driving pre-
existing conditions into
downstream
observations to get a
complete picture
Normalize using
research to explore
opportunities for
systems transformation
throughout the lifecycle
of health challenges
Advancement tracks that
reward innovative
community focused
outputs & time &
relational capital
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

13. For policy-makers, shapers, informers...
• From healthcare as a sector of the economy to health equity as one of the ends of
economies e.g. wellbeing & ecosystem-oriented development metrices
• This will help to create the fiscal space to innovate around pre-existing conditions
e.g. making it profitable for developers to invest in walkable communities, healthy
grocery stores, healthcare coverage for all
• Cannot happen without data systems that include equity metrices
• Needs corresponding financial & legal innovations e.g advance purchases for
suppliers who make solutions for health risks & diseases in underserved
populations
• Coherence in policymaking across sectors e.g. high dependence on fast food in
trade sectors militates against healthy nutrition promotion in health sector
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

14. For investors aiming for impact on grand
challenges…
• Widening scope of health investments to incorporate upstream drivers of
pre-existing conditions: healthy buildings, safe roads, healthy food stores,
localized R&D infrastructure in emerging economies
• Proactive financial instruments to direct capital toward pressing social
problems e.g. UN’s COVAX facility that improved access to vaccines on the
continent
• Identifying ways to support innovations that may not fit mainstream metrices
and are already being driven by communities
• Going from scale & profit as sole success metrics of portfolio companies to
impact on health outcomes & behaviours
• Investigate health equity impact to understand who innovations are serving
and who they could serve better
- Dr. Ebele Mogo (Twitter @ebyral)

15. Why not?

16. Thank you
Dr. Anita Taylor, Janet Janes Office
of Research, co-panelists &
everyone present