Festival of Ideas’ – the challenge to live well

“The pathways into good health, or poor health, are large and complex, and well outside a health service to implement,” she says.

Professor Stanley says the only way to really deal with health and wellbeing effectively, and before ill-health is established, is to look at societal pathways into health.

It’s this understanding, matched with her years as a scientist and health professional that makes her a perfect fit for the role of director of the 2013 Festival of Ideas. The Festival will explore issues of health and wellbeing under the themes of environments, food and nutrition, families, brains and minds, and democracy.

“You have to look at what’s happening in the broader society, for instance how we run our finances and economics, or how we organise our workplaces to understand how to achieve health,” she says.

“If you really want to unpack these pathways and prevent health problems, it’s much better if we can intervene before a problem becomes irreversible or inevitable.”

Professor Stanley says the “most brilliant” example of prevention through social programs linked with medicine and science is childhood vaccination.

“We’ve eliminated or reduced the risk of many infectious diseases so well that now the problem is convincing parents who’ve never seen these diseases they are still a risk. 

For Professor Stanley, it’s all about the data.

“If we can actually measure something, and research it, that’s a powerful way of getting action. If you’re a researcher like me, you want to get that data somewhere it’s going to make a difference, get it to the public, to the policy-makers. We want to get our data somewhere it can be influential. 

“We’ve failed spectacularly with climate change, and spectacularly with obesity, given that it’s not a health problem, it’s a societal problem.

“It’s now entirely possible my generation, generation baby boomer, may be the last generation to live longer than our parents, given the level of chronic disease that flows from those levels of overweight and obesity.”

Professor Stanley says the University of Melbourne is perfectly placed to host a wide ranging festival of ideas because it is “an outstanding institution, with such breadth and depth, and enthusiasm from people who want to make this festival a success.”

She says, in light of the fact our society is facing a number of huge “wicked” problems in areas like climate change, obesity, and food security, and  discussion of issues is informed by almost anything but the scientific evidence, the Festival will posit the question: “how does democracy serve to support a healthy society”.

“We’re going to debate whether democracy is actually working for this society. And we’re going to suggest that it’s not!  

“We will suggest there may be other ways to deal with these issues that are so important…perhaps too important to be left to the democratic process.”

The Festival of Ideas is a biennial series of event sover five days hosted by the University of Melbourne. It draws leading thinkers in their fields from all over the world, from academia, business, government, and public life to try to come up with new ways of looking at the complex issues of our world. In 2013 it runs from 1-6 October.

www.ideas.unimelb.edu.au/‎

Watch a video of Professor Stanley introducing the festival: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EE-SdvH00E