From the CEO

A key aim of the Milken Institute since its inception has been to improve human health and to inspire others to accept that challenge. We pursue our work via multiple avenues, with a common goal: to move medical research as well as the broader health ecosystem closer to a patient-centered culture, promoting life-transforming therapies and making them more accessible.

FasterCures, our center devoted to accelerating medical research and speeding the diffusion of life-enhancing technologies, convenes stakeholders from across the health infrastructure. It especially focuses on the needs of patients as they themselves see them. The Center for Public Health, also a part of the Milken Institute, focuses on prevention with a special emphasis on looming societal problems including opioid overuse.

Meanwhile, our Center for Strategic Philanthropy works with major philanthropists (and those aspiring to be) to make their funding more effective. Our Center for the Future of Aging specializes in the mental and physical health of the older population. And last but not least, our health research team is working to advance the state of knowledge on topics ranging from the global obesity epidemic to the gender health gap.

Last October, we brought together our centers, their stakeholders and nearly 1,000 health leaders for a three-day Future of Health Summit in Washington, D.C. Attendees heard from high-level policymakers, including the heads of the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services. Among the myriad session topics: managing the upfront costs of short-term cures for chronic diseases, improving health by improving diet, creating a resilient culture for ongoing biomedical innovation.

The energy, excitement and sense of enterprise that we experienced ourselves, and witnessed in others at the Summit, was a heartening validation of our approach in the health field — what may appear to be very different, even divergent, approaches to tackling problems in fact collectively serve the greater goal of improving the potential and reality of the health care system.

Our Future of Health Summit is now an annual event on the Milken Institute calendar. I look forward to updating you on future Summits, and the important work that our colleagues are doing in this crucial endeavor.

Michael Klowden

CEO