alright let me start with a personal
question when’s the last time you got
lucky not lucky like that but think of
an opportunity that brought you to where
you are now who helped you get lucky and
where did it lead you see we often think
of our mentors and teachers who are
older and wiser as those that provide
new opportunities and help open new
doors but how much of our lives have
actually been shaped by our peers
opportunities can be big things that
shape our lives like learning from
someone who inspires you or getting a
job in your field but more often there’s
small things that girl go a long way
like standing on the right side of the
escalator so let me tell you how I’ve
experienced the power of sharing
opportunity through a peer network
called the young professionals chronic
disease Network and how we’ve been able
to engineer and not just hope for
opportunities for people to get lucky
and turn luck into a regular occurrence
so where did it all start for me in 2009
I was finishing my undergraduate studies
in biology in London Ontario when I lost
a friend to cancer we had just
celebrated Clem’s remission / New Year’s
Eve in a Toronto piano bar singing at
the top of our lungs and losing him at
such a young age despite all the
treatment a first-class health system
could offer made absolutely no sense
and I was angry skipping ahead to 2013 I
was working in Kenya and I saw this
contrast that made me angry all over
again so I went to this small village in
the desert with no running water but
enough sugary soft drinks to bavin on
the other hand insulin a life-saving
medicine that controls sugar levels was
discovered a century ago still didn’t
make it into the hands of half of the
people worldwide who need it and this is
a fragment of a big global problem see
diabetes is a problem everywhere cancer
is a problem everywhere and the same is
true for mental illness and other non
communicable diseases somehow we’ve all
been touched by these diseases right but
preventable deaths and disability from
non communicable diseases is a huge and
rapidly growing problem in low and
middle income countries that we can no
longer afford to ignore there are so
many solutions that we have to make and
keep people healthy that just don’t make
it to reach the world’s majority so let
me take you back to Nairobi I was
working there and I came across the
website of the young professionals
chronic disease Network which was
growing as an online network at the time
and I saw that medical students were
meeting up locally so I joined them and
so we got together and talked about well
firstly how are we ever going to
remember the name of this thing young
professionals chronic disease Network
try saying that 10 times fast or even
once
but more importantly over the months we
shared our concerns on how our
generation would be left to deal with
these big problems and what we could do
to create solutions after all young
people are often at the forefront of
movements to create change you might
have heard that just this year in
London’s Parliament square the first
woman was commemorated with the statue
suffragists Millicent saw Millicent
Fawcett and at age 19
Millicent got lucky she heard
philosopher John Stuart Mill speak on
universal women’s suffrage and that was
an opportunity that led her to take on a
leadership role in the fight for women’s
rights in the UK in the late 19th early
20th century and history is filled with
many other inspiring examples of young
people leading change so we came
together and thought about how can we
create this collective shift in how we
think about death and about disease and
health on a global scale and that’s for
a few reasons reasons one is that these
are not just diseases of the rich in
fact people living in poverty are hit
the hardest
the second is young people are affected
for example mental illnesses often start
before age 24 and lastly these the
impacts of these diseases extend far
beyond health they affect our ability to
lead happy and productive lives
for example diabetes management often
costs over half of the average monthly
salary in Kenya
can you imagine over half of your income
going to treatment just to stay alive
and think of the opportunities that you
would lose
from being in these circumstances so
black in Nairobi
my colleague dr. Duncan Masika said to
me one day the network is growing and
formalizing hiring an executive director
to develop this into a global
organization you should do it in that
moment Duncan not only revealed my
opportunity for me but nudged me with
his words that he believed I could take
on this enormous feat of building and
running a global nonprofit startup and I
got lucky I applied and I got the job a
dream job to work on a topic I’m
passionate about and learning from
people all over the world both peers and
senior experts are the early stages of
my career so I gathered a team of
volunteers and we knew that we wanted to
create a space and platform for
passionate minds from our generations to
come together and create local change
where little else was being done
connected to a global network of support
that would breed fresh ideas and create
new opportunities and we were driven
learning from social movements of the
past we were driven by three principles
for action these are shared purpose
shared values and shared leadership and
I’ll come back to these so we went from
sitting around the table and as a small
group of people and I thought I’m
already connected to about 2,000 people
online but we grew to over 6,000 members
worldwide with 13 city hubs who are
taking real action for policy and social
change real things were happening there
were leadership and advocacy workshops
campaigns and discussions with policy
makers and we even created
a completely new research fellowship to
fill a training gap on non communicable
diseases in low and middle-income
countries and this is our first cohort
that started last year and they’re doing
research on topics like nutrition cancer
and mental illness in East Africa see
this network allowed us to create
opportunities for people with the talent
grit and determination to come together
to address these preventable health
disparities and I began to find myself
in change making discussions with
important people at the United Nations
the World Health Organization where I
had the opportunity to bring the
concerns and solutions of the next
generation to these discussions people’s
informed by our members on the ground
who really connected to the problem then
in May 2016 we were introduced through
one email to joseph mokuba medical
student at the time in Kampala Uganda
and Joseph informed us that the only
radiotherapy machine in the country had
just broken down in April 2016 leaving
thousands of people requiring
life-saving cancer treatment stranded
now close to 30,000 cases of cancer are
diagnosed in or even not diagnosed in
Uganda every year and half about half of
them will require radiotherapy so Joseph
brought together a team of six people
created a city hub and they launched a
four-week Twitter campaign to hold their
government leaders accountable to
bringing radiotherapy back to the
country and with the support of our
global network this campaign really
created a splash the issue was brought
back to the
papers the radio and Uganda’s presidents
you got a president son even retweeted
our hashtag and they got a commitment
from the Minister of Health to commit to
a timeline to bring to finalise the
bunker for the radiotherapy machine that
was being held up and a year later in
late 2017 radiotherapy was made
available again to Uganda in Kampala
rich or poor and so this small team
played a role in making that happen
you see we never get anywhere alone and
this one opportunity for me to take up a
role in a network grew beyond anything I
could have imagined so what can you do
to create your network of opportunity
I’ll take you back to our three
principles shared purpose an urgency to
act for us health inequalities and non
communicable diseases in particular
where the issue that brought us together
what’s your purpose shared values we
wanted our work to be driven by the
values of equity and social justice and
shared leadership we knew that by coming
together and by sharing challenging
workloads as well as opportunities to
develop our knowledge and skills could
results in real change on a much broader
scale even if it’s just in the lives of
a few people Nobel laureate Amartya Sen
says poverty is the deprivation of
opportunity and with that in mind think
about what you can do to create a more
equal and just world might just take one
introduction share your network
knowledge or skills with someone on the
opposite side of the world
we’re neck
store so I lend how I began how can you
help someone else get lucky thank you [Applause]
question when’s the last time you got
lucky not lucky like that but think of
an opportunity that brought you to where
you are now who helped you get lucky and
where did it lead you see we often think
of our mentors and teachers who are
older and wiser as those that provide
new opportunities and help open new
doors but how much of our lives have
actually been shaped by our peers
opportunities can be big things that
shape our lives like learning from
someone who inspires you or getting a
job in your field but more often there’s
small things that girl go a long way
like standing on the right side of the
escalator so let me tell you how I’ve
experienced the power of sharing
opportunity through a peer network
called the young professionals chronic
disease Network and how we’ve been able
to engineer and not just hope for
opportunities for people to get lucky
and turn luck into a regular occurrence
so where did it all start for me in 2009
I was finishing my undergraduate studies
in biology in London Ontario when I lost
a friend to cancer we had just
celebrated Clem’s remission / New Year’s
Eve in a Toronto piano bar singing at
the top of our lungs and losing him at
such a young age despite all the
treatment a first-class health system
could offer made absolutely no sense
and I was angry skipping ahead to 2013 I
was working in Kenya and I saw this
contrast that made me angry all over
again so I went to this small village in
the desert with no running water but
enough sugary soft drinks to bavin on
the other hand insulin a life-saving
medicine that controls sugar levels was
discovered a century ago still didn’t
make it into the hands of half of the
people worldwide who need it and this is
a fragment of a big global problem see
diabetes is a problem everywhere cancer
is a problem everywhere and the same is
true for mental illness and other non
communicable diseases somehow we’ve all
been touched by these diseases right but
preventable deaths and disability from
non communicable diseases is a huge and
rapidly growing problem in low and
middle income countries that we can no
longer afford to ignore there are so
many solutions that we have to make and
keep people healthy that just don’t make
it to reach the world’s majority so let
me take you back to Nairobi I was
working there and I came across the
website of the young professionals
chronic disease Network which was
growing as an online network at the time
and I saw that medical students were
meeting up locally so I joined them and
so we got together and talked about well
firstly how are we ever going to
remember the name of this thing young
professionals chronic disease Network
try saying that 10 times fast or even
once
but more importantly over the months we
shared our concerns on how our
generation would be left to deal with
these big problems and what we could do
to create solutions after all young
people are often at the forefront of
movements to create change you might
have heard that just this year in
London’s Parliament square the first
woman was commemorated with the statue
suffragists Millicent saw Millicent
Fawcett and at age 19
Millicent got lucky she heard
philosopher John Stuart Mill speak on
universal women’s suffrage and that was
an opportunity that led her to take on a
leadership role in the fight for women’s
rights in the UK in the late 19th early
20th century and history is filled with
many other inspiring examples of young
people leading change so we came
together and thought about how can we
create this collective shift in how we
think about death and about disease and
health on a global scale and that’s for
a few reasons reasons one is that these
are not just diseases of the rich in
fact people living in poverty are hit
the hardest
the second is young people are affected
for example mental illnesses often start
before age 24 and lastly these the
impacts of these diseases extend far
beyond health they affect our ability to
lead happy and productive lives
for example diabetes management often
costs over half of the average monthly
salary in Kenya
can you imagine over half of your income
going to treatment just to stay alive
and think of the opportunities that you
would lose
from being in these circumstances so
black in Nairobi
my colleague dr. Duncan Masika said to
me one day the network is growing and
formalizing hiring an executive director
to develop this into a global
organization you should do it in that
moment Duncan not only revealed my
opportunity for me but nudged me with
his words that he believed I could take
on this enormous feat of building and
running a global nonprofit startup and I
got lucky I applied and I got the job a
dream job to work on a topic I’m
passionate about and learning from
people all over the world both peers and
senior experts are the early stages of
my career so I gathered a team of
volunteers and we knew that we wanted to
create a space and platform for
passionate minds from our generations to
come together and create local change
where little else was being done
connected to a global network of support
that would breed fresh ideas and create
new opportunities and we were driven
learning from social movements of the
past we were driven by three principles
for action these are shared purpose
shared values and shared leadership and
I’ll come back to these so we went from
sitting around the table and as a small
group of people and I thought I’m
already connected to about 2,000 people
online but we grew to over 6,000 members
worldwide with 13 city hubs who are
taking real action for policy and social
change real things were happening there
were leadership and advocacy workshops
campaigns and discussions with policy
makers and we even created
a completely new research fellowship to
fill a training gap on non communicable
diseases in low and middle-income
countries and this is our first cohort
that started last year and they’re doing
research on topics like nutrition cancer
and mental illness in East Africa see
this network allowed us to create
opportunities for people with the talent
grit and determination to come together
to address these preventable health
disparities and I began to find myself
in change making discussions with
important people at the United Nations
the World Health Organization where I
had the opportunity to bring the
concerns and solutions of the next
generation to these discussions people’s
informed by our members on the ground
who really connected to the problem then
in May 2016 we were introduced through
one email to joseph mokuba medical
student at the time in Kampala Uganda
and Joseph informed us that the only
radiotherapy machine in the country had
just broken down in April 2016 leaving
thousands of people requiring
life-saving cancer treatment stranded
now close to 30,000 cases of cancer are
diagnosed in or even not diagnosed in
Uganda every year and half about half of
them will require radiotherapy so Joseph
brought together a team of six people
created a city hub and they launched a
four-week Twitter campaign to hold their
government leaders accountable to
bringing radiotherapy back to the
country and with the support of our
global network this campaign really
created a splash the issue was brought
back to the
papers the radio and Uganda’s presidents
you got a president son even retweeted
our hashtag and they got a commitment
from the Minister of Health to commit to
a timeline to bring to finalise the
bunker for the radiotherapy machine that
was being held up and a year later in
late 2017 radiotherapy was made
available again to Uganda in Kampala
rich or poor and so this small team
played a role in making that happen
you see we never get anywhere alone and
this one opportunity for me to take up a
role in a network grew beyond anything I
could have imagined so what can you do
to create your network of opportunity
I’ll take you back to our three
principles shared purpose an urgency to
act for us health inequalities and non
communicable diseases in particular
where the issue that brought us together
what’s your purpose shared values we
wanted our work to be driven by the
values of equity and social justice and
shared leadership we knew that by coming
together and by sharing challenging
workloads as well as opportunities to
develop our knowledge and skills could
results in real change on a much broader
scale even if it’s just in the lives of
a few people Nobel laureate Amartya Sen
says poverty is the deprivation of
opportunity and with that in mind think
about what you can do to create a more
equal and just world might just take one
introduction share your network
knowledge or skills with someone on the
opposite side of the world
we’re neck
store so I lend how I began how can you
help someone else get lucky thank you [Applause]
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