Tanya Harris, Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellowship: Fostering Collaboration to Improve Healthcare

EP66 WorkforceRx Podcast Tanya Harris

“Healthcare is just so large and complex and expensive. We’ve got to find better ways to reach across political divides, ideological disagreements and narrow, sector-based perspectives,” says Tanya Harris, who runs the Health Innovators Fellowship at the Aspen Institute which is designed to do just that. The program provides a diverse group of mid-career professionals with the opportunity to do the kind of connecting and thinking that’s not possible in the rush of daily life. “They’re away from family, they’re away from work and they’re in this big space so they can think differently. People take bigger bets in their own professional journey than they might have otherwise,” she explains to Futuro Heath CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. Examples include fellows coming together to tackle subjects as wide-ranging as adolescent mental health, supply chain innovation and health equity. One current fellow is a fire chief trying to meet the challenge of overwhelmed hospital emergency rooms. “It’s a really impressive group of folks that have been in, and continue to be in, this fellowship, and the possibilities are really endless.” This engaging conversation is a great opportunity to learn about efforts to foster greater coordination in the U.S. healthcare system and the importance of aligning incentives to achieve better outcomes.

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Jaime Fall, Director of UpSkill America at the Aspen Institute: Invest in a Culture of Learning

If you want to know how employers are changing their thinking about educating workers in the wake of COVID, Jaime Fall is in a great position to tell you. As director of the Aspen Institute’s workforce development initiative Upskill America, Jaime is constantly in touch with some of the 5,000 businesses in the program’s network and he has plenty of news to share with host Van Ton-Quinlivan in this episode of WorkforceRx with Futuro Health. From diversity to digital literacy to new safety protocols, businesses have many targets for training and advancement practices that were not necessarily priorities pre-COVID. And have you heard of the new trend in
“outskilling”? Jamie is here to fill you in. Bottom line: as the pace of change continues to accelerate, companies need to invest in a culture of learning so their workers will have the skills they need to be effective and productive.

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