Health Agency
Our healthcare systems focus primarily on disease treatment, with prevention and healthy living put in second place.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we brought together leading health social entrepreneurs in Europe to draw a collective picture of our healthcare systems and identify the root causes of one of the most pressing issues in the field: the healthcare system is dominated by medical interventions in cases where social and other types of care could be more applicable.
How can we focus on prevention and healthy living? What dynamics must change in health systems to priorities social health and wellness, and prevent more serious health issues?
Reimagining Community Health with Johnson & Johnson
Ashoka and The Johnson & Johnson Foundation have joined forces to surface pioneering practices and grow the field of Community Health innovation in Europe!
With this partnership, we are determined to build a system that values wellbeing and prevention as much as it values treatment.
By making people within communities healthier, the innovations we support will inevitably improve those communities in other ways, making them more livable, equitable, and cohesive.
Making More Health Initiative
Over the past 12 years, Ashoka and Boehringer Ingelheim have built a collective global vision: increase access to healthcare for people, animals and their communities.
In 2021, we implemented 6 facilitated online workshops to analyse the health system, create shared intentions and goals, and co-create specific actions and solutions.
Five social entrepreneurs developed a collective advocacy strategy to influence policymakers in Europe to implement policies that equip patients and communities to be active agents in their healthcare journeys.
Deep dive and how to join
Our healthcare systems focus primarily on disease treatment, with prevention and healthy living put in second place.
Non-communicable diseases are responsible for 87% of the disease burden in the European Member States and improved health promotion and disease prevention can reduce their prevalence by as much as 70%.
We are gathering our key learnings, key insights from social entrepreneurs and their organizations as well as the communities they represent to advocate for and enable holistic and social healthcare in Europe. We produce knowledge products together, bringing forward the key causes of dominance and reliance of medical standard interventions. We exemplify the causality of social inequality, information asymmetry, lack of holistic care vision in training and education, power imbalances between patients and health practitioners- among others.
Contacts
Léna Borsoi
Initiative Co-Leader
Léna Borsoi co-created and co-leads collaborative initiatives gathering, respectively, Ashoka Health Fellows and Gender fellows who are are analyzing systemic issues in their region and joining forces to address them.
For several years, she has been researching and working on the nexus between leadership and impactful cross-sector collaborations, more particularly as a program manager for the Executive in Residence program, supporting collaboration between corporate leaders and social entrepreneurs.
Yeleka Barrett
Ashoka Health Agency Lead
Yeleka holds a BA in Kinesiology from the University of Western Ontario, and a BASc in Public Health from Ryerson University. During her time at Ryerson University Yeleka volunteered with Youth Challenge International spending 2 months in Zanzibar, Tanzania working with youth and local community based organizations (CBO's) on, youth employment, peer education and HIV/AIDS awareness and stigma reduction.
After graduating from Ryerson, Yeleka completed a CIDA internship as a Capacity Building Officer in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania with the: Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development, and the charity organization: Canadian Support of Rural African Initiatives (CSRAI). In this role, Yeleka worked with a wide variety of CBOs helping them to effectively combat the effects of HIV/AIDS through business training, project implementation and outreach.
Today, she continues to volunteer on the board of CSRAI as acting Project Committee Chair. Yeleka is passionate about community health development and is enthusiastic about working with Ashoka to help drive the vision of: Everyone A Change Maker.