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Ten years ago, the Aspen Institute decided to expand its annual Ideas Festival from seven days to 10.
The extra three days would focus on one topic, and the inaugural “spotlight” would shine on health.
“Turns out, health was so popular, so rich in its programming, that there never was another spotlight on a different type of topic,” Aspen Ideas Health director Ruth Katz said in an interview last week.
By the fifth year, it was clear that health had become “integral” to the Ideas Festival, Katz said. And this Wednesday, the program kicks off its 10th anniversary.
Katz spoke with Aspen Public Radio in advance of this year’s Aspen Ideas Health. Programming continues through Saturday, followed by the core Aspen Ideas Festival through June 30. And while daytime talks are only for festival passholders, many evening programs are open to the public, with tickets available at aspenideas.org.
Kaya Williams: A lot of people might hear “health” and think of going to the doctor. But from what I’ve gathered of the speaker lineup, this is not just a doctor saying ‘eat your fruits and vegetables.’ How would you define the scope of the category of health?
Ruth Katz: You’re exactly right. Health is a very broad topic. And that’s exactly the approach that we take to it. It’s not just about going to the doctor, it’s not just about paying your hospital bills, or how to get good insurance. We see health from a much broader perspective, and the lineup for our programming takes that perspective exactly.
So we’re looking at the power of design — how do you design buildings so that they are healthy when people go in and work there? We talk about the science of technology, artificial intelligence, what’s happening with cancer breakthroughs, with Alzheimer’s breakthroughs, what’s happening with different diseases?
The healing economy, which is all about the business of healthcare, and again, not just about insurance, but things like private equity, private investment in health care, so it’s all about the business of health care much broader than we normally think about it.
Planet health — we think the environment, what’s happening with climate change is very key to what’s happening in terms of health, not just in this country, but around the globe. And by the way, this program has a global perspective, not just a domestic perspective on health.
How to thrive: We have a whole session on sleep, how important that is to better health. The senses: We’re focusing on smell, we’re focusing on hearing, but we’re also focusing on, ‘Do we have more than five senses?’ Those kinds of things. So you can see we take a much broader approach to health.
Finally, let me just mention because this turns out to be extremely popular, we have a whole track on women’s health. And we’ll have several different sessions on that, including looking at what’s happening with private equity that business has decided women’s health as a place to invest. Again, very broad perspective, not just ‘go to the doctor,’ not just ‘eat your vegetables,’ not just ‘get a good night’s sleep.’ There’s a whole lot more to health, and we try and focus on it all as best we can in the limited time that we have.
Williams: Now, you mentioned women’s health there. It strikes me. last year, one of the big topics of conversation at the Aspen Ideas Festival was Roe v. Wade, and what was to come there. A big topic of conversation over the last two years, three years now, has been COVID-19. Have these really landmark health events changed the tenor or the direction of the festival from where it was before?
Katz: Only in the sense that they are topics that are something that everybody’s focused on and interested in. Last year, we did a very special session on the Dobbs Supreme Court decision which overturned Roe versus Wade guaranteeing women the right to abortion. This year, we are doing a session on the Dobbs decision one year later, the unintended consequences of overturning Roe vs. Wade.
Similarly, we have sessions related to what happened with COVID-19. For example, are we prepared for the next pandemic? I mentioned previously, we have a whole track on senses. The session we’re doing on the sense of smell really grew out of what happened with COVID and so many people losing their sense of smell. If you look at when they do surveys, ‘what sense if you had to give up one, what would it be?’ Smell always comes up first. Until people experienced COVID and long COVID and lost their — many people lost their sense of smell. We now understand how important it is. So some of the issues that we focus on, we might not have five years ago. But because of COVID or because of the Roe decision or the Dobbs decision, we’re bringing a new emphasis to them, and they will be touched upon throughout the program for sure.
Williams: What are some of the different ways that health can intersect with the different parts of our lives that people might learn about at the festival?
Katz: “Your Brain on Art” is certainly one of them. I think all of us, whether we’re artists or not or practitioners in the field, we all have a sense just walking around this campus or walking around downtown Aspen — you look at the mountains, nature and art, you know that it has a positive impact on your health and wellbeing. What is becoming clear is that there is science to back that up. And so one of the sessions we are featuring in the evening, “Your Brain on Art,” we’ll talk about the science that is now behind that.
Similarly, we have a whole, as I mentioned, a whole track on “how to thrive.” Many of the sessions there will go beyond what you might think of as traditional health. So that will be part of it as well.
If I might just mention a few of our other evening programs, because we very much hope that the local people will take part in that — we’ve got one that actually is very exciting. We’re featuring three US Secretaries of Health and Human Services, the current secretary [Xavier] Becerra, but two former secretaries, Alex Azar who served during the Trump administration, and Kathleen Sebelius who served during the Obama administration. We believe this is the first time that a sitting secretary has sat down with predecessors to talk about what the department does and really the behind the scenes conversation of what it’s like to be the secretary.
We also have great programs in the evening on gun violence, looking at it from a public health perspective. We have one on the maternal mortality crisis. And this is related to the track on women’s health. As you may know, the maternal mortality rate, particularly among black women, is extraordinarily high in this country. We’re going to talk about that.
We also have a great program on how female athletes excel. And this is also part of our women’s track. But there’s been a lot of research on what makes men terrific athletes, very little about what goes into developing the performance and skills of women. So we’ve got a whole program focused on that.
We’ve also got, finally, “From Seed to Table,” all about from a food perspective, the role of getting the right seeds and developing those. So we’ve got Dan Barber, a chef and author who will be featured down there. So we hope the folks of Aspen will join us for some of this programming. We’re very excited about it.
Williams: Have you seen instances now that you have a decade of Ideas to work with, where you run into people, and they say, “Oh, I heard about something here and then it turned into something of action?”
Katz: Absolutely. We are, in celebration of our 10th anniversary, we are putting together a booklet that will profile 10 individuals who, based upon their experience here, it’s so influenced their work that they had a big impact out in the world.
Let me give you one example. Several years ago, one of our fellows, who is the mother of a deaf child, came here and it was the year that we featured five former FDA commissioners, Food and Drug Administration commissioners, which has responsibility for hearing aids.
She spent time with them and learned the ropes of how FDA operates and went back and made it her mission to try and get hearing aids to be covered as an over the counter product as opposed to needing a prescription. And that happened this year.
And her testimony that she gave before the FDA commissioners was made public. I don’t think we can take all the credit for it. But she gives us a lot of credit for coming here and meeting the right people and learning the ropes and taking what she learned and going back, turning it into action and really making a difference for literally millions of people.
You can now go into a drugstore and buy a hearing aid over the counter without getting a prescription,
Williams: Awesome. Well Ruth, thank you so much for joining me today.
Katz: Thank you.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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