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nib health summit to host global health expert

01 May 2026

nib health summit to host global health expert

nib health summit to host global health expert, key New Zealand policymakers, business and community leaders

  • Scholar, author, oncologist and former WHO and White House adviser, Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, to address nib NZ Health Innovators’ Summit 5 May, Auckland

  • Health Minister, Hon Simeon Brown, and Deputy Prime Minister, Hon David Seymour, to deliver keynote addresses

  • Business, NFP and community leaders to discuss state of the sector, stronger public-private partnerships and a drive to better health outcomes for New Zealanders

nib, New Zealand’s second largest health insurer, will host noted scholar and writer, Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, at the third Health Innovators’ Summit, to be held 5 May in Auckland.  The Hon Simeon Brown, Minister of Health, and the Hon David Seymour, Deputy Prime Minister and Associate Health Minister, will join the Summit and deliver keynote speeches. 

nib Chief Executive Officer Skye Daniels said Dr Emanuel is at the intersection of global health practice and policy. She said highlights from the summit programme include contributions from Sir Bill English, Chairman of Genpro Dr Angus Chambers, global health leader Dr Frances Hughes, and economists, policy experts and CEOs from the primary sector, the aged care sector, private hospital operators and significant private investors in the New Zealand health system. The Summit will examine potential new models of public funding and alternative models of care that increase productivity, reduce costs and provide improved health outcomes for New Zealanders.

“New Zealand’s healthcare sector needs to find better ways to fund and innovate in healthcare,” Mrs Daniels said. “As is the case in so many countries, we have better diagnostics, incredible medical technologies and healthcare solutions. But we also have an ageing population that needs more care, and that care is expensive. The Summit will explore ways that we can do better for New Zealanders, by examining best practise global healthcare, and partnerships within Government, business and communities.”

Dr Emanuel is a former adviser to the US White House and the World Health Organisation. He has written or edited 15 books, including a seminal study of the world’s best healthcare systems, with lessons for New Zealand. He states in Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care? (published in 2020) that all high- income countries face cost pressures in health. The US spends around 18% of GDP on health care; it has just 4% of the world’s population but accounts for about half of the world’s spending on drugs; he writes that in Germany, policymakers believe that unnecessary admissions drive high hospitalisation rates; globally, hospitals drive health care and consume high levels of health spending. He also writes two mega trends will dominate world health: ageing populations and expensive health care technologies. The number of people with multiple chronic diseases will grow, there will be greater need for more chronic care co-ordination; and far greater demand for long-term care.

His most recent book, Eat Your Ice Cream, launched this week in New Zealand, is a treatise on wellness, which Dr Emanuel describes as a global “industrial complex”. “Historically, upswings in wellness obsessions or lifestyle modifications seem to emerge when there is a collective sense that the world has spun out of control,” Dr Emanuel says in his book. After decades in public health and health care, he has developed a definitive and short list of what works, backed by science, and what constitutes a good and healthy life.

He references his own childhood, with a father who was a paediatrician, an activist mother, and two younger brothers Rahm, a former Chief of Staff in the Obama White House, senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, and former Mayor of Chicago; and Ari, a Hollywood super-agent. The Emanuels’ strong family engagement and robust activism led Dr Emanuel to a life-long commitment to scholarship, and an ethical and good life.

He is travelling to New Zealand with his wife, Dr Teasal Muir-Harmony, curator of the Apollo Collection at the Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum.

Mrs Daniels said the full-day programme aims to fuel debate and the genesis for solutions for some of New Zealand’s biggest healthcare challenges. The summit is sponsored by nib, with the support of the New Zealand Initiative.