Reimagine

“Illness is universal. Access to healthcare is not. That shouldn’t be true in the 21stcentury”

In this episode we focus on health equity. Every single day people are dying of entirely preventable, treatable diseases simply because they are poor, or because they live too far from medical care. Children die from diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition. A staggering number of women and babies don’t survive childbirth. Paul Farmer, who we heard from in Episode 1, has a name for this – Stupid Deaths. Every time we let someone die of a condition we know how to treat, that’s a stupid death. It’s a reminder that poverty is the most deadly pathogen of all.

How big a problem is this? According to the World Health Organisation, half of the world’s population cannot access essential health services. That’s nearly 4 billion people. Millions of the most vulnerable families are forced to choose between healthcare and food. With all the wealth and prosperity and technology we’ve created as a civilisation, it’s nothing short of a moral outrage.

Raj Panjabi wants to change that.

Raj is the founder and CEO of Last Mile Health, which brings lifesaving primary healthcare to some of the world’s most remote communities. Many healthcare systems are built around hospitals, and most hospitals are in cities. But in Liberia, as in many parts of the world, for rural communities the nearest medical care can be days away, by foot. So what if we could bring the healthcare to the people instead? 

That was the question Raj and his colleagues asked. And their answer was to take an old idea – community health workers – and reinvent it for the 21st century.

Raj is now taking his community-based healthcare model beyond Liberia. He has a big vision for what this can look like across the world. And how it could help in the fight against Covid-19.

Reimagine is a new podcast about people who are inventing the future. Presented by Oxford Answers and the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. New episodes on Thursdays.

Featuring:

Dr Raj Panjabi (@rajpanjabi), founder and CEO of Last Mile Health (@lastmilehealth) 

Host:

Peter Drobac (@peterdrobac), Director of the @SkollCentre for Social Entrepreneurship, Oxford Saïd Business School

Resources:

https://lastmilehealth.org/ 

On the urgent need to get PPE for ALL health workers, including community health workers:

https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/covid-19-it-aint-over-until-theres-ppe-all-over

Want to learn more about the show? Check out www.reimaginepodcast.com.

Have a question for Peter? Email him at [email protected].

Credits:

Producer/editor – Eve Streeter for Stabl

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

EPISODE 4: Beyond Greenwashing: The Business of Climate Action with Paul Polman and Cameron Hepburn

More and more CEOs are sounding all the right notes on the climate crisis. But is big business really ready to be part of the solution? Peter talks to Paul Polman, who became an iconic CEO by putting sustainability at the centre of Unilever’s business, and Cameron Hepburn, Oxford professor of environmental economics.

“We were pretty scared, but the challenges of climate change and growing inequality needed to be addressed with courage, and courage is on the border with fear.”

In this episode we focus on the role of big business when it comes to the climate crisis. More and more CEOs are sounding all the right notes on sustainability. But is big business really ready to be part of the solution? Or is it just greenwashing?

Host Peter Drobac talks to Cameron Hepburn, Oxford professor of environmental economics, about the vital role business has when it comes to combating climate change.

He’s also joined by Paul Polman, one of the first CEOs of a big firm to walk the walk on this issue.

For ten years Paul was at the helm of Unilever – one of the oldest and largest consumer goods companies in the world. Whether you’ve heard of Unilever or not you’ve probably got some of their products in your cupboard – from tea to ice-cream to soap, Unilever’s hundreds of brands have massive global reach. 

During his decade at Unilever, Paul became an iconic CEO by putting sustainability at the centre of the firm’s business. He was also an early champion of the Sustainable Development Goals, working with then UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, to build private sector support for the SDGs.

Paul has since gone on to co-found Imagine, which aims to bring businesses together to combat climate change and inequality. 

This episode also features a special update from Cameron Hepburn about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the climate emergency.

Reimagine is a new podcast about people who are inventing the future. Presented by Oxford Answers and the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. New episodes on Thursdays.

Featuring:

Paul Polman (@PaulPolman), co-founder and chair of sustainability consulting firm Imagine.    

Cameron Hepburn (@camjhep), professor of environmental economics and director of the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. 

Host:

Peter Drobac (@peterdrobac), Director of the @SkollCentre for Social Entrepreneurship, Oxford Saïd Business School

Resources:

https://imagine.one/

https://www.cameronhepburn.com/

Want to learn more about the show? Check out www.reimaginepodcast.com.

Have a question for Peter? Email him at [email protected].

Credits:

Producer/editor – Eve Streeter for Stabl

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

EPISODE 3: Higher Ground: Reimagining Higher Education

“Talent is distributed evenly around the world. What is not is opportunity.”

Around the world universities have closed their physical doors and temporarily moved online due to Covid-19. That creates all kinds of challenges. 

But it’s also a chance for us to re-examine the very idea of a university in the 21st century.

Higher education has been broken for a long time. With costs out of control, in many parts of the world a university education is a privilege most could only dream of. While a mismatch between what’s taught and the skills needed for the 21stcentury means many graduating students are burdened with debt and can’t find jobs. 

Across Africa higher education has for too long been seen as a luxury the continent cannot afford. According to the World Bank, in sub-Saharan Africa just 9% of young people enrol in a tertiary education. That compares with 60% in the UK, and 88% in the US.

Yet a vanguard of unconventional startup universities is flourishing there. One of them is perhaps the boldest experiment in higher education on the planet – the African Leadership University or ALU. 

Peter talks to ALU’s founder, Fred Swaniker, about his vision to transform higher education in Africa by making it cheaper, more accessible and purpose-driven. His goal is to develop 3 million ethical and entrepreneurial leaders for Africa and the world by 2035.

Could this be the future of higher education? Peter explores global trends and possible solutions with international education specialist David Johnson. 

Reimagine is a new podcast series about people who are inventing the future. Presented by Oxford Answers and the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. New episodes on Thursdays.

Featuring:

Dr David Johnson of the Centre for Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford.

Fred Swaniker (@FredSwaniker), founder and CEO of the African Leadership Group.

Host:

Peter Drobac (@peterdrobac), Director of the @SkollCentre for Social Entrepreneurship, Oxford Saïd Business School

Resources:

https://www.alueducation.com

Want to learn more about the show? Check out www.reimaginepodcast.com.

Have a question for Peter? Email him at [email protected].

Credits:

Producer/editor – Eve Streeter for Stabl

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As the world slips into recession, possibly even depression, Covid-19 has revealed the design flaws in our global economy.

For decades, the conventional wisdom has been that there’s no problem the invisible hand of the market can’t fix. And while a relentless pursuit of growth at all costs has delivered prosperity for some, the gulf between the haves and the have-nots is at historic levels.

Will this once-in-a-century pandemic create a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a real shift in our economic systems? If so, what should that look like?

Six years ago, Ian Goldin predicted the next financial crisis would be caused by a pandemic. We talk with Ian about how we got here, and how to get out of it.

Then we meet renegade economist, Kate Raworth, whose big idea - people and planet living in harmony “inside the doughnut” - may have found its moment.

Reimagine is a new podcast series about people who are inventing the future. Presented by Oxford Answers and the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. New episodes on Thursdays.

Featuring:

Ian Goldin (@ian_goldin), Professor of Globalization and Development, Oxford University

Kate Raworth (@KateRaworth), author of Doughnut Economics

Host:

Peter Drobac (@peterdrobac), Director of the @SkollCentre for Social Entrepreneurship, Oxford Saïd Business School

Resources:

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21stCentury Economist, by Kate Raworth

The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, And What To Do About It, by Ian Goldin and Mike Mariathasan

A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise In Disaster, by Rebecca Solnit

Want to learn more about the show? Check out www.reimaginepodcast.com.

Have a question for Peter? Email him at [email protected].

Credits:

Producer/editor – Eve Streeter for Stabl

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“Shame on us if we cannot seize this moment to make some desperately needed improvements in our health systems.”

For years, many in global health have been saying that “the big one” - a pandemic disease - was a matter of when, not if. 

And this is the big one. 

So we ripped up our schedule to start the new series of Reimagine with a special emergency podcast on the coronavirus pandemic with the world’s foremost public health hero – Dr. Paul Farmer, the co-founder of Partners In Health.

Peter and Paul have been colleagues, friends and fellow troublemakers for 20 years. They look back to explore what past epidemics can teach us – and ahead to how this pandemic might define us.

What can lessons from Ebola teach us about how to effectively deal with Covid-19? And is this the moment to rebuild our human social architecture to ensure fatalities on this scale never happen again? 

Watch Bending The Arc

Learn more about Partners In Health

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to a new and original podcast series from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University’s Said Business School, presented by Peter Drobac.

In this series we meet the visionaries, the disruptors, the world’s problem-solvers, who are taking up the challenge of fixing the bits of our world that are broken.

The people who see things differently, and we need them now more than ever.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.