Health Summit: The Annual Event of the HGPI

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Following the Congressional Briefing with the members of the Diet of Japan which took place on February 25nd, we opened the Global Health Forum 2011on 26th.

We focused on Global Health, in collaboration with  UNITAID and Department of Global Health Policy of The University of Tokyo.

As you can see from the program, the host of this forum was Ms. Doden of NHK, an expert in this field, and the key note was delivered by Mr. Douste-Blazy, Board of UNITAID, UN Special Advisor on Innovative Financing for Development, and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of France.  The panelists were; Professor Shibuya, University of Tokyo, Mr. Tistdall, GAVI (Japan is one of the major nations supporting the bond issuance for immunization), Mr. Eun Joo Lee, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Korea, Ms. Cristina Parsons Perez, American Cancer Society,  Mr. Mugitani, Senior Vice Minister of Ministry of Health of Japan, Dr. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President of CSIS and Director of Global Health Policy Center, and Dr. Yonekura, Chairman of the Sumitomo Chemical and Japan Business Federation (Keidanren).  I am grateful for their participation, knowing their tight schedule.

The forum succeeded in coordinating a good, meaningful discussion thanks to the participation of many key persons in the field of Global Health.  I would also like to note here that Mr. David Bowen of the Gates Foundation kindly joined our Forum.

The discussion started by searching for the possible area and means where Japan could contribute.  We focused on the achievement of the MDG, discussing possible support by the developed countries, and the process to follow, taking into account the current financial difficulties which those developed countries have.  Although Japan is currently making contributions through immunization bond issuances in addition to ODA by the government, we tried to figure out new types of support that is independent from the tax money allocated from the government of Japan.

I hope that the Japanese economy as well as the mood in its society will improve soon.

 

Collaboration with CSIS and Congressional Briefing: A New Process

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Our HGPI (Health and Global Policy Institute) have been hosting Health Summit every February and for this year it was held on February 26th.

We launched this year a collaboration project on Health Policy with CSIS （Center for Strategic and International Studies）, a well known Think Tank based in Washington DC.  This collaboration has been our hope and issue since last year.

The background of this collaboration is that Dr Brian Biles of CSIS participated in our Health Summit last year, and HGPI co-hosted an international conference last June in London under the title of ‘Transition from G8 to G20: Health and Development’ with CSIS and Chatham House (an established British Think Tank).

We had a preliminary meeting at the Congressman Hall room on February 25th with influential Japanese legislators and the CSIS team Stephen Morrison , Brian Biles.  Also participating in the meeting were the specialists of the project – Professor Gerard Anderson of Johns Hopkins University and Professor Ikegami of Keio University for ‘hospital payments’, Professor John Hamelka of Harvard (he has a wonderful blog site) and Professor Akiyama (in Japanese) of the University of Tokyo for IT and health record and patient safety.

A number of legislators with good knowledge of healthcare policy shared their valuable time with us; Mr. Otsuji (in Japanese)(LDP, former Minister of Health and Welfare), Dr. Sakaguchi (in Japanese)(New Komeito, former Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare), Mr. Seko (in Japanese) (LDP), Mr. Kan Suzuki (in Japanese)(DPJ, Senior Vice Minister of Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Japan), Dr. Adachi (in Japanese)(DPJ, former Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Labour and Welfare), Dr. Umemura (in japanese)(DPJ), and Mr. Konishi (in Japanese)(DPJ).  I thank them all for their participation and good, productive discussion.

We also invited several people from business and mass media.  Dr. David Bowen of the Gates Foundation happened to be in Tokyo, so we asked him to come as well.  Dr. Bowen worked for many years as the policy staff for Senator Edward Kennedy so he has a good knowledge of how healthcare policies work or how legislators develop and manage the process of legislation.

I think that this is the very first case that policymaking process like this took place in Japan.  It is the first time that an independent think tank of Japan and the United States collaborated in policymaking, and in its process, set up a Congressional Briefing session with nonpartisan legislators at the Japanese congress auditorium.  Next meeting of this CSIS-HGPI project will be held in Washington DC on July 14th, at the timing where a large framework is worked out.

I hope that this event will eventually become one of the new steps of legislation process in Japan

The World Think Tank Ranking: HGPI Ranks in the Top 10 for the 2 Consecutive Years

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The world ranking is a topic in many areas as the world goes global.  There are the top 500 rakings of companies, rankings on DGP and competency of the nations, rankings of the universities, billionaires, so on and so forth.

It was just last year that I noticed that there was such thing as the ranking of think tanks.  The list I found was based on the study by the University of Pennsylvania.

It came as a big surprise to us when we discovered in 2009 that our Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI)  (founded in 2004, originally named as Health Policy Institute but changed to current name in 2011) was ranked in the Top 10 (Ref.1 P.42) in the field of Health Policy.  The list included Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, RAND, and other institutions known to the world as the first class policy institutes.

I wondered what this year’s ranking would be since I have thought that the result of 2009 might have been some sort of a mistake.  So, as we were preparing for the annual Health Summit to be held in February, I had some concern about the evaluation for 2010.  However, it turned out that our institution was again among the Top 10 (Ref.1 p.34&35). I don’t want to boast, but this is truly a great achievement.
 
The number of think tanks completely independent from government organizations is still small outside the United States or Great Britain.  I would like to express my deep appreciation and thanks to all the people who supported our activities and the staffs who did a great job at our institution.

From Davos -4

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Today is the last day of this year’s Davos meeting.  Throughout the meeting I have been exposed to many thought provoking things/issues.

One of them is the power shift taking place in the internet age, as observed in the drastic political change in Tunisia and Egypt.  The effects of WikiLeaks is similar in nature to these shifts.

On the other hand, the world economy’s prospect is still unclear.  Mr. David Cameron delivered a wonderful speech as the leader of his nation.  Mr. Cameron and his administration are rapidly carrying out many bold policies in this difficult time.  I think their task is very difficult.  People will criticize them in many ways, naturally, but in today’s circumstances, true leadership is being sought more than ever before.
 
President Obama also delivered his State of the Union address in Washington DC.  A poll right after the speech showed that 55% of the people supported Obama.  This is a good rate.  There is no one policy that will satisfy all people.  It’s best to learn from history, see the trends, equip oneself with intelligence and courage to do what has to be done so that we may adapt to the change taking place in this totally new global world.  Leaders are expected to do all this and set clear priorities, to talk to people of the nation and of the world so that they can understand what to do ? a leaders’ ability to do all this is being tested.  Such is the world we are in today.

The panel of ‘WHAT IF: there is reunification on the Korean Peninsula? ’was also very thought provoking.

The last session of this year’s Davos meeting, ‘Inspired for a Lifetime’, is on-line in video and summary, too.
 
Overall, the Japanese media, I regret to say, seemed as if they did not exist at all.  The list of media coverage is uploaded on the front page of the Davos meeting, and even the Huffington Post is in the list! The Japanese media were not listed once.  Isn’t there any Japanese journalist or journalism that would speak/write not only to Japan but to the world?  Are we not the nation of the 3rd largest economy?  I did see several (but not many…) Japanese reporters in Davos. It  seemed to me however, that even there Japanese reporters were sometimes trapped in ‘traditions’ such as the ‘kisha-club (reporter’s club)’ which is so powerful back at home.  However, I saw some good signs in the phenomenon of participants being active in twitter.  I like it.

This year, luckily, I had the privilege of traveling with Ms. Junko Kawaguchi, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs to and from Zurich-Davos.  Thank you!

I will be back at home on the 31st.  I wonder how politics, the economy and everything else in Japan will look to my eyes after having been exposed to so much here?

From Davos -3

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What’s happening in Davos is reported on its web site   (for videos, see here).  Take a look and enjoy!

Today, the Prime Minister Kan will deliver a speech at 11am.  I imagine staff are busy in preparation.

I started the day with the ‘IdeasLab’ of Harvard University. The speakers were Dr David Ellwood of the Kennedy School, Dr Mohsen Mostafavi of the Graduate School of Design, two Deans　(the Business School Dean, Dr Nohria was unable to make it), Dr David Bloom, GAC’s Ageing Council Chair, and it was hosted by Annie Koh of Singapore Management University.  The theme was ‘Breaking Education’s Boundaries’.  It was a very exciting session.  I enjoyed making comments, too.

The speech of the PM Kan started at 11:30.  However, much of the audience left the venue before the speech since the panel before was ‘The Global Economic Outlook’ hosted by Martin Wolf  of the Financial Times. But who can complain?

I thought that the prime minister’s speech was quite good. Starting with the recent disturbance of Egypt, he spoke well, and the way he handled the Q&As was also good.  You can view this On-line (both in English and Japanese ). Now, the question is, when, how, and to what extent can the Kan administration carry out their plans as described in the speech.  It’s time that the strategies and decisions of the government be tested.

On the other hand, I see quite a few problems on how PM Kan’s speech was reported in Japanese media.  I urge you to read and compare how the newspapers reported it.  Today, unlike the old days, you are able to see and listen directly to the original speech.  This is the power of the internet.  How do you evaluate the speech of Mr. Kan or the quality of the reports by the Japanese media?

Immediately after the speech, a lunch meeting was held with Mr. Kan, and hosted by Mr. Carlos Ghosn.  I think Mr. Ghosn managed the Q&A’s well, too.

After lunch, there was a panel titled ‘Re-inventing Japan’ (everybody knows that there have been many panels with similar titles and yet nothing has changed…).  The Prime Minister opened the event with his message, followed by Minister Kaieda, Dr. Sadako Ogata, Mr. Kojima, Chairman of the Mitsubishi Corporation, Mr. Charles Lake of Aflac.  The host was Mr. Kristof, former head of the NY Times Japan office.  Since Mr. Kristof was well aware of the problems in Japanese media (such as the one about ‘Kisha club’, the reporters’ club), it seemed there was incompatibility amongst some of the comments in the beginning.  Of course we know Mr. Kristof is not responsible for this…..

I enjoyed participating in several sessions, listening to many new ideas, meeting wonderful people, having lively conversation, and making new friends in new fields.  You never know what happens in the future.  I saw many interesting new developments in the fields such as Design, Arts and technology, the Scientific frontier, etc. in the effort to address global issues.

The evening soiree, ‘Inclusive India!’, presented a show full of actions. The venue was packed with people, so I left rather early.

At any rate, in this Davos meeting, I noticed gaps existing between the roles played by government and industry in their handling of international finance and other issues.  Things appear to be calming down at this moment, but in reality, there is a high possibility that some big change could actually occur within several years’ time.  The notion of this was not spoken openly, but at a level of very private conversation.  I had this sort of conversation with a very famous economic journalist who told me there was a concern that EU may be like Japan, like it was for these 20 years.

Today, there exists a number of situations that could trigger crisis on global scale.  Tunisia and Egypt may be just the beginnings.

 

From Davos -1

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On the morning of the 25th I departed Narita for Zurich via Frankfurt, arriving at Davos late at night.

On the 26th, I participated in the early morning sessions. The IdeasLab is always interesting and thought-provocative, so I participated in the session of ‘Design for the New Reality’.  Here, Dr. Yoko Ishikura, Dr. Kohei Nishiyama (he was the discussion leader of the ‘Product Design’ panel), and Professor Toshiko Mori of Harvard University (at ‘Scarcity-driven design’) were the participants from Japan.  As for myself, I joined the discussion with Adam Bly because it seemed interesting and I have had discussions with him on ‘Innovation’ for several years at GAC. Dr. Bly is apparently developing quite an interesting new domain.  It is both stimulating and enjoyable to join in a panel based on presentations with higher perspectives.

Please visit Dr. Ishikura’s blog also.

I participated in several sessions, as well as the closing event of the day, the GAC dinner.  The majority of the people had participated in recent Dubai meeting so we had good conversation.  Lawrence Summers and Amy Chua were the two super special guests.  Please refer to Wikipedia for their backgrounds.  I assume you all know Mr. Lawrence Summers.  He is currently a professor at Yale University.  Ms. Amy Chua published a book early this year that has become a trendy, if not controversial topic.  These two guests made our discussion so interesting.  It was a privilege to be able to exchange a few words personally with Ms. Chua after the dinner.
 
The title of her book is: ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’.  She writes about raising her two daughters as a Chinese mother. Her opinions and actions triggered quite a discussion among her readers.

Ms. Chua writes about the rules that children are ‘not supposed to, not allowed to’ do.
? attend a sleepover
? have a playdate
? be in a school play
? complain about not being in a school play
? watch TV or play computer games
? choose their own extracurricular activities
? get any grade less than an A
? not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
? play any instrument other than the piano or violin
? not play the piano or violin
There are more important rules.  I haven’t read the book yet, but she said, ‘In a sense, it’s like a Jewish mother of 20 years ago’.  She is quite a personality.

No wonder people have a lot to say about her rules.

?

A Debate on Education at The 2nd anniversary of The Commons 30 Fund Created by Mr. Shibusawa and His Friends

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Late in the afternoon, on January 19th, after giving a lecture at my Keio SFC course (which I intend to write about later), I joined a panel (in Japanese) at the 2nd anniversary of the Commons 30 Fund (in Japanese) founded by my friend, Mr. Ken Shibusawa.

The panel was hosted by Mr. Shibusawa and I was supposed to have a dialogue with Mr. Kenichi Fukuhara, the CFO of Benesse and the head office manager of Corporate Communication (I knew this much beforehand….)   Then, I discovered that the theme was education.  Just the right topic for me!

Mr. Fukuhara showed slides titled ‘Escape from Galapagos Island’.  His intention was to deliver a strong message that Japanese education was also changing to a Galapagos.  Quite shocking!  Then, the topic shifted to ‘the insular mindset of Japanese youth’, which is popular these days.

Given his message, I responded by saying ‘it is not the youth which has problems, but the generation of their parents, and the older’ (Ref.1, 2) (Ref.3, 4 in Japanese). 

I have been focusing on this message for 1-2 months.

This provoking panel is uploaded on UStream.  I feel a bit embarrassed to show this to you, but the future of the youth comes first.

The key, always, is to see the essence within the big picture.

P.S.  I already found some blogs (Ref.1,2 all sites are in Japanese) reporting on this event.  、　、Their comments made me happy.

 

Recommend Taking a Leave of Absence From School: Support Youth Who Go Abroad!

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Throughout 2010 I have recommended that people, especially students, take a leave of absence from school. Response from the youth is not bad.  I’ve gathered that this idea is spreading gradually so I sent an article to Asahi Shinbun and it appeared on the ‘My Point of View’ column in the Jan. 14th morning edition.

In a quite limited space, I argued as below, which I summarized in a list. The title of my article is the same as this posting.  Please forward this article to your friends in any way you please, like e-mails, blogs, or twitter. 

Japanese youth are by no means insular minded. Youth are reflection of the society of the time.

Governments, industries, and educational institutes should do better.  Mind you, youth is our only hope and resource for Japan tomorrow.

 “My Point of View

  • I have recommended taking a leave of absence for some time now.  It is because I sincerely wish that youth can broaden their horizons while they are still undergraduate students.
  • A broad human network is a strong tool for leaders to be, in whatever field.  As globalization continues, international friends you make through your travels who are not affiliated with any one particular organization are a huge asset. Sharing meals together, and experiencing the world together is so important.
  • You can take courses at universities, join NGO activities at the developing countries, or maybe experience internships at global enterprises.  What bothers me now is that currently we do not have any good, stable system to encourage youth who wish to go abroad.  From the emails and conversations I have with students, the most urgent problem to be addressed is the problem of tuition.
  • National universities waive the tuition during the period students are on leave, but private universities sometimes continue to charge tuition.  You get an impression that those universities are putting management before education.  What a disgraceful and sad thing to do.  Can’t they exempt tuition while students are on leave?  This, however, is not the problem of universities alone.  I believe that there are many things that government could do.
  • There are of course other problems beside tuition.  For instance, we need better system that will acknowledge the experience gained overseas; such as exchange of units or transfer of students for a certain period.  I would like to know the thoughts of the university administrations.
  • For Japanese youth, my advice is not to be insular minded, but to challenge, to go abroad.  I have an impression that both students and their parents, because they seek too much of a safe and stable life (especially after the economic bubble burst), tend to avoid the risk of international study.
  • Typically in Japan, students busy themselves with company interviews (shu-katsu, in Japanese) in their junior year at university.  The students think of nothing else but to get a job offer from as many companies as possible, as quickly as they can.  This is not a way to nurture global talents.  If we cannot educate the talents of the next generation, we cannot stop this nation’s decline.  Even now, existence of Japan is fading away in many international political, economical, and diplomatic scenes.  I am deeply concerned.
  • Youth in other nations are aggressively working their ways to the top universities of western countries. These are the locations where many of the world’s leaders emerged. These universities not only provide high quality education, but offer you settings to develop multi ethnic, multi national human networks.  The more you are exposed to friends from different histories or cultures, the clearer vision you will have for your future.  International education is not good only for the individuals, but will also play a significant role in the making of a nation because these global talents will become the central working force in any political, economical, or social organization of the country.
  • So, let us together encourage Japanese youth to go abroad for training.  Universities, industries, parents ? in short, the society as a whole, must share this vision.  By supporting youths who take leave of absence from schools to go abroad, we can nurture our ‘human assets’ and create hope for a brighter future for Japan.”

The Asahi Shinbun newspaper, January 14, 2011, page 19

A Recommendation to Take a Leave of Absence From School ? Are Japanese Youth Insular Minded?

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Recently, I notice many articles and reports on insular mindset of Japanese youth in Japanese media.  Is this really so?
 
The other day, I attended a symposium, and here again, the topic was discussed.  I said that my view was a bit different.  The content of my lecture overlaps with my lecture at my Keio SFC class.  Mr. Koiwai at JST kindly summarized my speech well.  The title of my lecture is ‘Recommendation to Take a Leave of Absence from School ? What Are the Characteristics That Japan Seek in Its Human Resource?’  (in Japanese).

People have different views on this issue.  I am not surprised.  For instance, I agree with the view expressed in the article; “The Deceit in ‘Japanese Youth are Insular Minded’” (Ref.1, 2)(all in Japanese).

How are Japanese Universities  (Ref.1 both links in Japanese) (Ref.2, 3 in English) doing in this global age?

Are current employment systems in big industries (such as notifying students that they have been hired in the 3rd year in college) (cf. Pasona case)  good today?  It seems to me that too many institutions are unable to shift from conventional practice.

As I always say, I think the number of people who left Japan as an individual, free from institutions, is very limited amongst the generation of our current university students’ parents. The same, I suppose, can be said with the generation before them.  The majority of people who went abroad for business or for international study were, I assume, supported by their companies or government offices. 

It is so important to encourage and support youth to develop their career in global settings, to help them find things they truly want to do, and to assist in building human networks within this rapidly changing world.  It is our responsibility to help the young who have our future to see, feel, and think about the outside world.  They need to do this as independent individuals, even for just a short period of time.

As I have seen, I think ‘Recommendation to Take A Leave of Absence From School’   (Ref.1,2) might be the best advice.

Welcoming Mr. Akira Tsuchiya and Mr. Daisuke Kotegawa to My Keio SFC Class

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I assume that you are aware that I have a class at the Keio SFC campus  (Ref.1, 2) during the autumn semester of 2010. 

Mr. Akira Tsuchiya is a graduate of Keio SFC.  He also studied at the graduate schools at Harvard, Columbia, and Georgetown, has been working for several years at the administrative offices of the World Economic Forum (popular as the Davos meeting), in Geneve and Japan.  I have known him for almost 10 years. We’ve worked together on various occasions.  Unfortunately, I was unable to attend his lecture due to my trip to Doha, but later, he kindly let me know how it went.  The lecture was well received by the students, too.  I assumed this since Mr. Tsuchiya is their senior. He works at a global institution and he talked about his experience first hand.  I would have liked you to see his lecture on video but unfortunately it is only for access within campus because many of the Powerpoint slides used were not intended for public viewing.

The lecturer of the week after was Mr. Daisuke Kotegawa. He is a top-scale, unique, international leader. He is the current Director at IMF, recently having returned from Washington DC, and resigning from the ministry of finance. (I searched and hit many sites on him in Google, but could not find the link just right to introduce to you…) It is hard to find a person like him these days.  One might call him a kokushi, a Japanese term for a patriot who devote one’s life for the good of the nation.  On a side note, he is competent in many languages, and is currently learning Chinese from a private tutor.  I think he is polishing his skills.

The lecture by Mr. Kotegawa was on international finance and was given in English.  He talked about the bubble bursting in Japan 20 years ago, the fail of Lehman in 2008, lessons to be learned from these events, future perspective of Japan and the world, and so on.  It was truly a top-scale talk, just like him.  What he said had a huge impact and a sense of reality because everything was based on his actual experience. He was one of the people in charge of these problems at the ministry of finance at the time the bubble burst, and he was at IMF at the time of Lehman issue in 2008.

It was a good learning for me, too, since I am also one of the many outsiders, just like the students.  Thank you very, very much to these two invited speakers.