Pandemic & the Economy 2023: “A Pandemic-resilient Society”

In 2023, ASEF PHN partnered with the government of Finland to host a follow-up event to the 2021 online roundtable on “Pandemic and the Economy: Investment for the Future”. The high-level conference titled Pandemic & the Economy 2023: A Pandemic-Resilient Society took place on 6-7 June 2023, in Helsinki, Finland. The participants included senior officials from the public health sector and non-health sectors involved in the COVID-19 response in respective countries across Asia and Europe, as well as experts from academia and NGOs.

The overall aim of this conference was to facilitate a much-needed dialogue between the public health and non-health sectors when deciding on COVID-19-related policies and strategies in different countries. The focus will be on how to best shift from a pandemic response to building a pandemic-resilient society after the initial response. As each country possesses different health, economic, and social infrastructures, no “one-size-fits-all” response is expected. Nonetheless, the conference sought to identify some general guidelines for policy action that can be considered by ASEM Partners for future implementation.

The specific objectives were:

To bring together officials representing different government portfolios such as Public Health and Economy, as well as other stakeholders, to identify the priorities in order to best address the COVID-19 pandemic, especially after its initial phase.
To share lessons learned and best practices across Asia and Europe on dealing with the apparent public health-economy trade-off.
To identify potential actions linked to the points identified above in order to build a pandemic-resilient society; and
To address the role of the health sector in connecting health and governance during pandemics for better inter-sectoral/international collaboration.

To read the full scope and purpose of the conference, click here

To read the session guides, click here