Holistic Health Europe 2026

Panel discussion: Designing whole person care at scale: what the system must support

Mainstream healthcare increasingly aspires to whole person care, yet delivery is constrained by how systems are designed to operate. Clinical pathways, incentives, workforce models, and policy frameworks shape what is feasible in practice. This session examines the structural conditions that enable or inhibit integrated, relational, and preventative care, focusing on operating models, capacity, and system alignment rather than individual effort.

• How operating models and incentives shape care behaviour
• The impact of workforce capacity, fragmentation, and moral injury on delivery
• What system-level design changes make whole person care workable at scale

Featuring:

• Royal Society for Public Health Chief Executive, William Roberts
• University of Oxford Professor of Psychiatry, Prof. Kam Bhui
• NHS England National Clinical Expert in Occupational Health & Wellbeing, Dr. Shriti Pattani OBE

Keynote presentation: Why benefits strategies are failing employers and employees alike in driving effective outcomes

Even with the advent of various technologies and wellbeing coming to the fore as a workplace phenomenon, for most employers, the approach to workplace health hasn’t materially changed in 30 years. Decisions are still based upon incomplete understandings of cost and value and over-indexed to antiquated criteria, such as reward, not outcomes.

In this session, Howden will be taking the findings from its latest Benefits Design research and Global Health Trends report to give you:

• A clear blueprint for a strategic approach to managing benefits, including the right metrics, tools, data and cadence;
• The signals that are coming from both UK and Global health trends as to what’s working and what’s not
• A new way to think about the relationship between reward, benefits and wellbeing and your likely next steps

Featuring:

• Howden Employee Benefits Executive Director, Matthew Gregson

Panel discussion: Designing employer health systems that work: benefits, risk, and workforce performance

Most employer health efforts fail not because people resist them, but because the underlying system is misaligned. Benefit design, insurer structures, job design, governance, consent models, and performance pressure all shape what is possible long before any programme is launched. This session examines how large organisations are redesigning workforce health as a cost, risk, and operational issue - not a cultural add-on.

• How benefit design, governance, and accountability shape real health outcomes
• Where occupational health, insurance, and support models hit legal, commercial, and capacity limits
• What changes when workforce health is treated as an operational cost and risk issue, not an engagement initiative
• How large employers reconcile evidence, ethics, scalability, and spend

Featuring:

• Haleon EMEA Occupational Health Lead, Dr. Clare Fernandes
• Google Clinical Lead for Occupational Health - EMEA, Dr. Paul McGovern

Coffee, networking, and exhibition

Panel discussion: Sustainable high performance - reducing burnout, absence, and performance volatility at scale

High performance has become a corporate requirement, but many organisations are operating on depletion. This session examines how to build durable workforce capacity through job design, load management, recovery, leadership norms, and measurement - treating performance as an operating model, cost, and risk issue rather than a motivation problem.

• Reduce workforce risk and cost by designing capacity into how work runs, lowering absence, claims pressure, and attrition
• Stabilise performance at scale by cutting fatigue-driven errors, rework, and output volatility
• Give leaders a usable operating model with clear levers, governance, and metrics that sustain output without burnout

Keynote presentation

Partner slot available

Lunch

Presentation: Alcohol explained - the hidden workforce cost of the drink we normalised

William Porter, author of Alcohol Explained, brings a clear-eyed account of what alcohol actually does to sleep, mood, cognition, and recovery. This session cuts through the myth that alcohol relieves stress or improves rest, and examines how a highly normalised behaviour quietly drives fatigue, anxiety, dependency risk, and lost performance. For employers, the issue is not morality but hidden cost, reduced capacity, and avoidable harm.

• Alcohol Explained Author, William Porter

Panel discussion: Profit or people? Reimagining business in an age of extraction, burnout and cultural decay

Many modern organisations operate within economic systems that reward extraction - of labour, attention, time, data, and natural resources. These dynamics have contributed to rising burnout, eroding trust, fragmented communities, and a growing sense that work and culture are misaligned with human limits. 

This session examines how extractive logics are embedded in organisational design, incentive structures, and policy environments - often unintentionally. It explores the tensions leaders face when attempting to operate differently, and the structural constraints that make change difficult. Rather than promoting idealised alternatives, the discussion focuses on real-world attempts to move beyond extraction, including where they succeed, where they fail, and why scale remains challenging.

• How extractive economic models shape work, health, and organisational culture
• The structural incentives that lock organisations into short-termism and depletion
• Evidence from regenerative, slow-growth, and human-first business experiments

Featuring:

• Breitling Chief Sustainability Officer, Aurelia Figueroa
• COOK Co-Chair, James Perry
• Global Society for Good Leadership Co-Founder, Otti Vogt

Presentation: Recovery-ready leadership: reducing risk, cutting hidden costs, and strengthening wellbeing

Addiction is often misunderstood, reduced to “willpower” or treated as a private issue. In reality, it is a chronic health condition that affects the brain, behaviour and, crucially, the workplace. Dr Georges Petitjean will unpack the evidence, highlight how substance use and addiction show up at work, and explain the scale of the issue in today’s workforce. This session clarifies how silence around addiction creates risk and cost, and why the issue increasingly sits at the level of organisational governance.

•  Workplace Addiction & Recovery Movement Founder, Dr. Georges Petitjean

Panel discussion: Addiction as organisational risk: from stigma to system response
 

Too often, addiction is treated as a private failing rather than an organisational challenge. This panel explores how senior leaders and system owners can tackle addiction head-on, using evidence-based strategies to replace stigma with support.

• Examine how addiction rewires the brain and why “willpower” narratives fail at organisational level
• Explore the organisational conditions that determine whether issues are surfaced or remain hidden
• Clarify the governance, duty-of-care, and risk levers that shape organisational response

Featuring:

• Society of Occupational Medicine President and King’s College London Professor of Defence Mental Health, Prof. Neil Greenberg
• Moderator: Workplace Addiction & Recovery Movement Founder, Dr. Georges Petitjean