Invitation

January 13, 2026 

Dear Minister Keldo,  

On behalf of Foreign Policy and our partners at the Novartis Foundation, it is our pleasure to invite you to a private lunch roundtable, “AI and the Future of Healthy Cities: Partnering for Impact and Scale,” that will take place on Tuesday, January 20, from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. CET at the Edelweiss Hotel on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Given your leadership and expertise, we would be delighted if you would join us.  

Urban populations around the world are facing increasing rates of chronic and cardiovascular disease, driven by rapid urbanization and widening gaps in prevention and care. Today, more than half the global population lives in cities—91 percent are exposed to polluted air and nearly 40 percent lack safe sanitation services. By 2050, almost 70 percent of the world’s population will be in urban areas, which could further deepen inequities in access to care, widening pressures on health systems. At the same time, breakthroughs in data architecture, artificial intelligence, and digital health technologies are transforming what health systems can measure, manage, and deliver at the population and community levels. Against this backdrop, momentum is building for new models of population health management that move beyond traditional care delivery and leverage real-time insights to inform policy, drive sustainable investments, and targeted action. 

Examples emerging from around the world point to the potential of next-generation tools to understand localized factors contributing to adverse health outcomes, help close health care access gaps, and transform population health. However, governance, interoperability, and sustained finance remain significant barriers to deploying AI and digital tools at scale. To advance effective and resilient healthy-city strategies, public-private partnerships are needed to transform health systems, secure long-term investment, and ensure that innovation is translated into real-time, impactful improvements to population health. Empowering local authorities with data and AI-powered interpretations can enable the rapid generation of actionable insights to drive place-based, data-informed interventions that improve urban health sustainably at scale.   

At this critical inflection point and against the backdrop of WEF 2026, Foreign Policy and the Novartis Foundation will convene a closed-door, high-level, Chatham House Rule discussion on deploying and sustaining intersectoral data and AI-driven partnerships, aligned behind the goal to improve the health of urban populations. 

Many thanks for your time as you consider this invitation. An indication of your interest by January 15th would be greatly appreciated.  

Sincerely,