Institute For The Future

Unhealthy behaviors, the obesity epidemic, and the global chronic disease burden represent a challenge that the Health Horizons Program described last year as the need to transform our bodies and lifestyles. On Thursday and Friday, June 17 and 18 we will host our annual Health Horizons conference at Cavallo Point Lodge in Sausalito, where we will be taking a close look at how scientific discoveries and technological innovations will create new tools to meet this challenge by opening up interventions not only in our bodies, but in our networks and environments as well. If you are not attending, you can follow along on Twitter using the hashtag: #hh2010.

Some highlights from Thursday June 17 include:

Health Horizons Program Director Rod Falcon will kick off the conference by introducing the core challenge of transforming bodies and lifestyles.

The Health Horizons team will introduce our new Map of the Decade: The Future of Science, Technology, and Well-Being, and explore how developments in science and technology (S&T) will enable us to monitor, measure, analyze, treat, and enhance our health and well-being in fundamentally new ways. We have identified several ways in which elements of S&T will converge in the coming decade, and our forecasts range from how we can pre-empt future health threats to novel approaches to tinkering with our bodies.

From there, IFTF's Vivian Distler will lead a discussion on the future of making information meaningful by highlighting some of the tools and technologies that will enable people to better understand and manage their health.

Keynote speaker James Fowler will discuss research from his book Connected on the ways social networks influence different aspects of our lives--for better or worse--including our behaviors and health states.

IFTF's Miriam Lueck Avery will explore emerging efforts to expand understandings in health beyond disease and will consider future practices of happiness, well-being and resilience.

We will conclude the evening with Bradley Kreit who will engage in a discussion about the ethical and practical dilemmas of using new scientific tools to create expanded notions of well-being.On Friday, June 18, we will take deeper dives into content areas including:

Researcher Jake Dunagan will highlight the future of deep diversity and some of the understandings that will create expanded notions of diversity and identity.

Finally, Rachel Maguire will take a look at the future of anticipating and pre-empting health threats.We are very excited about the new research we will be presenting at the conference and hope you'll be following along on Twitter at #hh2010!