Leading Through Change: What the 2026 Yale Healthcare Conference Revealed About the Future of Healthcare
Thaniya Shankar ’27, a joint-degree student at Yale SOM and the Yale School of Public Health, reflects on her experience as a co-chair of the largest student-led healthcare conference in the nation.
Healthcare today is not just evolving. It is being pulled in competing directions—between innovation and implementation, speed and stability, and rising expectations without the systems to meet them. At this year’s Yale Healthcare Conference on April 17, one idea stood out: progress will depend on leaders who can navigate these competing forces without losing focus on the patient.
Hosted in collaboration across Yale’s School of Management, School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and School of Public Health, the 22nd annual conference brought together leaders from across sectors to tackle some of the most urgent challenges in healthcare today. As the largest student-led healthcare conference in the nation, it sits at the intersection of disciplines, where business strategy, clinical care, and policy directly inform one another. This year’s theme, “Healthcare Leadership in a Time of Accelerating Change: Solutions for Value, Safety, and Patients,” captured a clear sense of urgency around what leadership demands in a system defined by constant change.
In my first year at Yale SOM, I stepped into the role of co-chair alongside Sydney Kang, MPH ’26, and Casey Ma, MPH/MBA ’26, working closely with our faculty advisor Dr. Howard Forman. Nine months before the event, we started with a simple question: which conversations actually matter right now, and who needs to be in the room for them? From there, every decision carried weight. We pushed on themes, challenged assumptions, and were deliberate about bringing in speakers who could move the conversation forward rather than repeat familiar arguments. By the time the conference came together, every aspect was intentionally designed. That clarity reinforced a broader insight: meaningful dialogue does not happen by chance. It is built through intention, pressure-testing ideas, and creating space for real engagement.
We opened with a keynote from Dr. Farzad Mostashari, co-founder and CEO of Aledade, a physician-led value-based care company. Dr. Mostashari is this year’s John D. Thompson Distinguished Visiting Fellow, an honor that recognizes leaders who have fundamentally shaped healthcare policy, delivery, and innovation. He challenged a common assumption that innovation alone can transform the system. Instead, he argued that real progress depends on alignment between technology, incentives, and workflows. Without that alignment, even the most promising solutions fail to scale.
One idea that stood out was his metaphor of being “a frog among fish,” which underscored the importance of stepping outside a single discipline to see the system in full. In a fragmented healthcare landscape, that perspective is critical as it allows leaders to identify where value is lost, where incentives break down, and where change is possible but often overlooked.
Each of the eight breakout sessions brought these themes into sharper focus, grounding broader ideas in real-world constraints.
In one of the four morning sessions, “Who Decides the Future? FDA, CDC, and NIH Authority in a Politicized Healthcare System,” moderated by Dr. Mostashari with panelists Dr. Sejal Hathi, Dr. Reshma Ramachandran, and Dr. Jason Schwartz, the conversation centered on the growing tension between scientific authority and public trust. What this revealed was how fragile trust has become. Credibility, even for historically apolitical institutions, is now constantly tested and easily eroded. It must be actively maintained through transparency, consistency, and clear communication. In a landscape where perception can carry as much weight as evidence, leadership increasingly requires navigating political pressure without compromising scientific integrity.
That complexity carried into one of the afternoon sessions, “Innovations for Global Health: Building Global Equitability and Access in Conflict,” moderated by Dr. Ingrid Katz with panelists Dr. Sharon Chekijian, Dr. Jennifer E. Miller, and Dr. Andrey Zinchuk. The conversation shifted from questions of trust to the realities of access in environments shaped by conflict and instability. What stayed with me was how powerfully these settings expose the underlying inequities in global health. Technology can extend reach, yet without infrastructure, coordination, and trust on the ground, even the most promising ideas fall short. Progress is defined by what continues to work when conditions are at their most unforgiving.
This perspective carried into the executive panel moderated by Dr. Robert Galvin, featuring Dr. Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health; Dr. Rachel Bedard, internist, geriatrician, and palliative care physician; and Dr. Reed Tuckson, managing director of Tuckson Health Connections, LLC. What set the discussion apart was how grounded it remained in reality. Each speaker drew on lived experience to show how even well-designed interventions can fall short when they fail to reflect the realities of the communities they serve. In this context, leadership is not defined by expertise alone. It requires the discipline to listen, the flexibility to adapt, and the judgment to respond to conditions as they actually exist.
Helping lead the conference reshaped how I think about impact in healthcare and reinforced why I chose to pursue an MPH/MBA. Working at the intersection of public health and business means confronting a system where nothing operates in isolation. Policy shapes trust, trust shapes adoption, and adoption determines whether innovation reaches patients. The hardest part of improving healthcare is not identifying solutions but ensuring they hold when tested in practice.
What became clear throughout the day was how seriously that challenge was taken. Speakers and attendees pushed past surface-level answers, challenged assumptions, and stayed engaged even when solutions were not obvious. This experience clarified the work I want to do long term: building strategies that are innovative, grounded in real-world systems, and capable of delivering impact at scale.
I am excited to build on this momentum as chair of the 2027 Yale Healthcare Conference alongside Mary Price, MPH ’27. Having seen both the process behind the scenes and the impact of the conference day itself, I am looking forward to shaping an experience that continues to push these conversations forward and creates space for ideas that can meaningfully influence the future of healthcare.
Executive Board Members
Content Committee: Aman Rai ’27 (Chair), Kayla Sohn ’27, Kyle Feliciano ’27, Johnny Zhou ’27
Finance Committee: Melissa Tempest ’27 (Chair), Swarnima Bhattacharya ’26, Ali Albowaidey ’27, Chloe Chen ’27
Logistics Committee: Arushi Dixit ’27 (Chair), Mary Price ’27, Phil Xu ’27, Zoe Vaz ’27, Matthew Kanzler ’27
Marketing Committee: Amber Tran ’26 (Chair), So Yon Jun ’26, Arwen Chen ’26, Serena Slim ’27
