Translational Health Sciences

Oxford University
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Turning innovations into practical solutions for healthcare needs is an imperative – and one that can only become more urgent as demands on health systems increase. Our key focus in this series is the ‘downstream’ phases of translational health sciences – the human, organisational and societal issues that impact on the adoption, dissemination and mainstreaming of research discoveries. Talks are taken from the Oxford Translational Health Sciences Programme and delivered by leaders in the field of Translational Health Care.

  1. 6D AGO · VIDEO

    Why Sustainability in Health Care Cannot Be Implemented: From Implementation Failure to Ongoing Mediation

    Prof Eivind Engebretsen discusses why sustainability in health care cannot be implemented. Sustainability in health care is widely framed as a problem of implementation: policies are designed, evidence is assembled, and failure is diagnosed when action does not follow. This lecture challenges that framing. Prof Engebretsen argues that sustainability in health care cannot be implemented because it is not a stable programme but a contested, value-laden practice that takes shape through mediation rather than delivery. Treating sustainability in health care as implementable is therefore a category error—one that helps produce the very problem it seeks to resolve, by recoding alternative values as barriers and situated practices as deficits requiring correction.   Drawing on a recent systematic review of grassroots indicators across fields and sectors—including sustainability indicators— Prof Engebretsen shows that in these projects sustainability was not absent, waiting to be implemented, but already being practised—through livelihoods, norms of resource use, and shared understandings of what could and could not be sustained. What was missing was not action, but a language in which such practices could count as sustainability within policy frameworks. What is commonly described as an “implementation gap” is therefore better understood as a space of ongoing mediation, where knowledge, values, and authority are continually renegotiated. Sustainability in health care, on this view, is always already happening—not as logistical rollout, but in grassroots initiatives, everyday practices of care, and irresolvable disagreements over what should be sustained, for whom, and at what cost. The task is not to implement sustainable health care more efficiently, but to recognise, engage with, take responsibility for, and strengthen the forms of sustainability already in motion by rendering them visible and politically intelligible.   About the speaker: Professor Eivind Engebretsen is a medical humanities scholar and professor of interdisciplinary health science at the University of Oslo, serving since 2023 as Dean of the Open Campus at the European University Alliance Circle U, and founding head of the Sustainable Health Unit (SUSTAINIT) and the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Education (SHE), a Norwegian government- funded Centre of Excellence in Education. His research explores how medical knowledge is generated, applied, documented, evaluated, and communicated in clinical encounters as well as in broader societal contexts.

    1h 1m

  2. JAN 23 · VIDEO

    Economics of Global Biopharmaceutical Market Design: Value, Health Technology Assessment, and Access

    Professor Lou Garrison gives a whistle-stop tour de force of his many years of work at the interface of innovation markets and innovation value to healthcare systems and patients. Professor Lou Garrison gives a whistle-stop tour de force of his many years of work at the interface of innovation markets and innovation value to healthcare systems and patients. He delves into his international work on evolving value frameworks in rethinking how we capture and assess the value of innovation, beyond the economic value via concepts of productivity, spillover and equity value. He casts a critical eye over cost effectiveness analysis and access against the rapidly changing political backdrop of governments grappling with health care cost containment. About the speaker: Lou Garrison, PhD, is Professor Emeritus in The Comparative Health Outcomes, Policy, and Economics Institute in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Washington, where he joined the faculty in 2004. He is also a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Office of Health Economics in London following his sabbatical there in 2012-13. Professor Garrison received a PhD in Economics from Stanford University and has more than 200 publications in peer-reviewed journals. For the first 13 years of his career, he worked in non-profit health policy. Following this, he worked as an economist in the pharmaceutical industry for 12 years. His research interests include national and international health policy issues related to health technology assessment, personalized medicine, benefit-risk analysis, and other topics, as well as the economic evaluation and pricing of biopharmaceuticals, diagnostics, and other technologies. Professor Garrison was elected as ISPOR President for July 2016-June 2017. He has served as co-chair of ISPOR’s Policy Outlook Committee for Health Science Policy Council, and he is currently a leader of the ISPOR Special Interest Group on Global Access to Medical Innovation.  In September 2022, he received the Avedis Donabedian Outcomes Research Lifetime Achievement Award from ISPOR.

    1h 2m

  3. 12/11/2025 · VIDEO

    Storytelling, a powerful tool, but does it help lead to behaviour change?

    Dr Becky McCall examines the potential of digital storytelling as part of the behavioural science framework. Within public health, storytelling - including digital storytelling (DST) - is frequently examined through a scientific lens, whether as a research method or an interventional tool for influencing behaviour change. However, DST is inherently an arts-based practice, grounded in the creation of authentic, 3–5-minute videos that convey personal experiences of illness. Its strength lies in the interpretation and emotional meaning generated through the storytelling process, both for the storyteller creators and for audiences. In my recent work, I examine the potential of DST to relate experiences of antibiotic resistance and antibiotic adversity to the lay public. Using qualitative data from a public screening and discussion of five digital stories, we explore the extent to which this arts-based, largely emotion-driven method can be situated within a behavioural science framework, and whether it may form part of a causal pathway towards reducing unnecessary antibiotic use among the general public. About the speaker: Dr Becky McCall has been a medical journalist working for various global news outlets for 20 years. Most of her work has been in the written format, but she has also worked in radio and television. She has watched with interest as the patient voice has shifted from the margins to adopting an increasingly central role in medical discourse. Her recent PhD work challenged assumptions around public perceptions of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through the creation of digital stories as an interventional tool to shape mindsets around the use of antibiotics. She has just been awarded a PhD from University College London. Some of her stories can be found at StoryBug. Please note, the sound of the story Dr McCall showed in this talk was not recorded but you can find this story and others at her website https://storybug.org.uk/.

    53 min

  4. 05/13/2025 · VIDEO

    Politics and Global Health: The Need for a New, Resilient Architecture

    Mitchell Warren will provide updates on AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition's (AVAC) court challenge against the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID and offer his insights into what a more resilient global health funding infrastructure could look like Recent, dramatic shifts in global health funding include cuts to US and UK foreign aid. This has had a cascade of devasting consequences on treatment and prevention programmes, including for HIV and TB across the globe. Mitchell Warren will provide updates on AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition's (AVAC) court challenge against the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID and offer his insights into what a more resilient global health funding infrastructure could look like. About the speaker: Mitchell Warren has spent nearly 30 years devoted to expanding access to HIV prevention, working with a wide range of activists and advocates, researchers and scientists, product developers and deliverers, policy makers, community advisory boards and the media from across the globe. This has often been as a translator, helping these often-diverse groups with diverse points of view understand each other better. Since 2004, Mitchell has been the Executive Director of AVAC, an international non-governmental organization that works to accelerate the ethical development and global delivery of HIV prevention options as part of a comprehensive and integrated pathway to global health equity. Through communications, education, policy analysis, advocacy and a network of global collaborations, it mobilizes and supports efforts to deliver proven HIV prevention tools for immediate impact, demonstrates and rolls out new HIV prevention options, and develops long-term solutions needed to end the epidemic.

    42 min

  5. 03/31/2025 · VIDEO

    System Entrepreneurship: Lessons from Rwanda

    Educating future leaders in Africa and driving transformational impact on African economies.

    1h 22m

  6. 12/19/2024 · VIDEO

    Reimagining Humanity in the Age of Technology

    This lecture will provide a brief journey into the future, providing projections for how our lives will change as technological innovations continue to accelerat In an era marked by unprecedented technological advancements, our world is undergoing a profound transformation that challenges the very essence of what it means to be human. From the rise of artificial intelligence, to the widespread use of robotics, to advancements in biotech, to the omnipresence of smartphones, the impact of technology on our lives is undeniable. Technology has revolutionized how we communicate, work, learn, receive medical care, and perceive reality. As we stand at the intersection of innovation and human existence, it is imperative to explore the multifaceted ways in which technology is reshaping our society, raising profound questions about ethics, privacy, and the essence of humanity. This lecture will provide a brief journey into the future, providing projections for how our lives will change as technological innovations continue to accelerate. We will examine how we should think about the future as we strive to create a better world. And we will explore how technology is impacting all areas of human life and how we can leverage behavioural science and human-centred design to ensure that our growing reliance on technology does not eclipse the fundamental importance of human connections. Dr. Scott Clarke is Senior Managing Partner and Global Practice Leader for Digital Transformation & Innovation at Infosys Consulting. As a behavioural economist, Scott has dedicated his career to helping organizations grow and innovate by understanding the ramifications of sociological and technology change and how this affects relationships with their customers and employees. His current work investigates how digital technologies are changing the world, and what types of organizations are best able to lead this change rather than being disrupted by it. Over a 30-year consulting career, Dr Clarke is proud to have partnered with a variety of leading organizations on their digital transformation journeys including Unilever, Nestle, Philips, Burberry, Merck, T-Mobile, Gilead Sciences, Chevron, Johnson & Johnson, Ford Motor Company, and Sony Electronics. Prior to joining Infosys Consulting, he led global management consulting practices for several other professional services organizations including PwC, IBM, Capgemini and Cognizant. Dr Clarke holds a DPhil in Behavioural Economics from the University of Strathclyde and a BA (Hons) in Economics and Political Science from Queen’s University (Canada). He is formerly Senior Lecturer in Behavioural Economics at Queen Mary University of London. His academic work focuses on the relationship between humanity and technology, and how technology advancements including AI, robotics and biotech expand humanity’s horizons and redefine what it means to be human.

    1h 8m

  7. 10/25/2024 · VIDEO

    Why digital health and care interventions fail and what we can do about it

    Unfortunately, many digital health interventions fail to realize their potential. Although there is no recipe for success, there are ways in which developers, implementers, and adopters can help to maximize successful implementation, adoption, and scaling Unfortunately, many digital health interventions fail to realize their potential. Although there is no recipe for success, there are ways in which developers, implementers, and adopters can help to maximize successful implementation, adoption, and scaling.

    48 min

  8. 06/26/2024 · VIDEO

    The changing dynamics of mixed health systems in low and middle-income countries (LMIC)

    Professor Kabir Sheikh discusses how social trends shape health systems in low- and middle-income countries, focusing on the complex mix of public-private, traditional-modern, and digital-nondigital axes. Health systems are social systems, and are shaped by broader trends such as urbanisation, commercialisation, the information revolution, and the post-pandemic social reordering. Against that backdrop, the configuration of health systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is often deeply heterogeneous or “mixed” across different intersecting axes, for instance: public-private, professional-lay, traditional-modern, and digital-nondigital. These dynamic and contested intersections influence health system performance and equity, and also create unique policy challenges and opportunities. Professor Sheikh will outline key inferences from his body of research on the governance of mixed health systems in LMICs, and reflect on the changing character of health systems, and implications for the future of the field of health policy and systems research (HPSR). Professor Kabir Sheikh is a field leader in health policy and systems research (HPSR) with over 20 years’ experience of research in diverse settings across Asia and Africa. His interests lie in the domain of equity-oriented, contextually relevant health policy and systems research (HPSR) that generate insights and solutions for health systems problems, using social science approaches (policy and implementation analysis).

    48 min
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Turning innovations into practical solutions for healthcare needs is an imperative – and one that can only become more urgent as demands on health systems increase. Our key focus in this series is the ‘downstream’ phases of translational health sciences – the human, organisational and societal issues that impact on the adoption, dissemination and mainstreaming of research discoveries. Talks are taken from the Oxford Translational Health Sciences Programme and delivered by leaders in the field of Translational Health Care.

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