Journey to Universities: Health and Health Care

"A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not the mere absence of disease or infirmity".
The World Health Organization thus defines health by making it a condition rooted in the social context that expresses the physical state of a person and the form of well-being, which generates the desire to act and live. Various factors contribute to the state of health such as family structure, economic possibilities, lifestyles, the environment, the type of work, as well as health, or the organizational structure designed to guarantee citizens to remain healthy or to recover. the possibility of being.
The UN Agenda 2030, while focusing with objective 3 Good health and well-being the importance of facilitating the well-being and health of citizens, encompasses all other objectives actions aimed at improving health, such as poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental decline. To achieve these goals, in the Health area is important to work in different directions:

• create knowledge development ecosystems
• simplify processes by increasing skills in data collection and analysis
• train multidisciplinary professionals
• rethink care models until they are “portable” in patients' homes thanks to technology.

In a nutshell, the challenge would be the creation of health systems capable of promoting the maintenance of the physical health of the entire population, without any distinction of individual, social and economic conditions, ensuring continuity and equal access for every health need. Certainly, complex systems that work and evolve thanks to the continuous contribution of new medical knowledge and digital technology.

The encounter between technology and health has opened unimaginable and interesting scenarios for those who consider the needs of people and their achievement through medical progress facilitated by technology to be fundamental.                                                                                                                 
The Health sector shows adequate sensitivity towards the introduction of technologies in the entire cycle of provision of social and health services and is already reaping the benefits of this evolution. In everyday life, it is increasingly evident how much innovation and technology have become strategic, enabling and essential factors for managing the accessibility of health information, the decentralization of care, the rationalization of resources and the improvement of care pathways.

This is a context that makes Healthcare a field that requires collaborative synergies between the dynamism of companies and the excellence of Research and Universities to train new professionals capable of virtuously integrating traditional knowledge with innovation and technology. New health professionals who have vertical and transversal skills, to manage new tools and processes that have been rethought or rationalized that make it possible to increase the quality of care and therefore of life.                                                           
And therefore universities - places of knowledge and dissemination of knowledge - offer increasingly specialized study courses and advanced research doctorates, showing vitality and interest in exploring the new frontiers of medicine and digital innovation applied to it.
Thus, even companies - especially those that consider innovation a strategic factor for the competitiveness, employability and economic and social growth of the territories - feel it is essential to accompany universities in the implementation of study and research paths that aim to create new skills, new competences and new professional figures capable of encouraging innovation and the improvement changes described. 

Intesa Sanpaolo, with such convictions, collaborates with many universities with the aim of allowing students to participate and contribute to the development trend that involves the Health sector.

Also known as La Statale, the University of Milan has a multidisciplinary teaching approach aimed essentially at developing new professional skills required by the world of work. Among the many postgraduate training initiatives, the university offers the 2nd level Master in global health / global health accomplished with the support of Intesa Sanpaolo.

Now in its second edition, the master is delivered by the Multidisciplinary Research Center in Health Sciences ((MACH - Center for MultidisciplinAry ResearCh in Health Science) of the University of Milan jointly with Italian and international experts and academics.                                                                                         
MACH is an international benchmark and leading center for health research for infectious diseases. The master deepens the study of the major global health problems, in a multidisciplinary perspective and provides the fundamental basis for understanding and analyzing health problems with a focus on economic and social determinants.

Over the nine centuries of its history, the University of Bologna has always managed to renew itself by making its roots the trigger and the driving force that has generated today's excellence. Alma Mater is a university that experiments, invests in the quality of training and education and promotes the fundamental values that are at the heart of teaching and research meeting society’s needs.

With a research grant, Intesa Sanpaolo supports the development of the research program in the field of pediatric cardiac surgery coordinated by Prof. Gaetano Domenico Gargiulo, Full Professor of the Department of Specialized, Diagnostic and Experimental Medicine and Director of the Department of Pediatric and Developmental Heart Surgery of the Sant'Orsola-Malpighi University Hospital.
PhD students carry out theoretical-practical research by designing and experimenting new cardiac surgery techniques in the pediatric field.

With its five Campus and with the “A. Gemelli "is the largest Catholic university in Europe. Thanks to the articulated and multidisciplinary training offer, the rigor of studies closely linked to the productive world and lively scientific research, it offers students a solid cultural background and the essential professional skills to introduce them to the world of work.

Intesa Sanpaolo's collaboration takes the form of a PhD scholarship for Research in Health Services and Systems Research organized by the High School of Economics and Management of Health Systems (ALTEMS) of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. The Covid-19 emergency has forced us to experiment with new, more connected and resilient solutions to manage the contagion, accelerating the era of digital health transformation that is the driving force of collaboration.                
The research explores the possibilities of digitization and the technologies needed to plan and manage health systems and to optimize diagnosis and treatment processes.

UniCamillus - a university exclusively dedicated to Medical and Health Sciences - welcomes students from all over the world and prepares them to be doctors or health professionals.  Most of the students come from developing countries and have the aim of preparing themselves better for the medical profession and then returning to practice it in their country of origin, somehow filling the need for health care.

Intesa Sanpaolo's support is realized with the establishment of scholarships for non-EU students engaged in research and study of pandemics and health emergencies, such as TB, HIV-AIDS and malaria, which still afflict a large part of the countries of the South of the world.

Four research projects for the fight against Covid-19, developed by young researchers from as many Italian universities, supported by our insurance parent company Intesa Sanpaolo Vita, in particular:

• Study of multimorbidities related to SARS-CoV-2 infection: clinical and pathogenetic assessments - by the Università di Milano
• Study of tissue and organic lesions in SARS-CoV-2 positive deceased patients: morphological, molecular, ultrastructural and clinical-pathological correlations - from the Università di Padova
• Genomic, immunologic and hormonal gender differences in COVID 19 - of the Università Cattolica di Roma
• Synthetic "monoclonal type" antibodies vs SARS-CoV-2 "- from the Università di Calabria 

The current challenges for public health and scientific advances and the proven interaction between health, economic and cultural level, have highlighted the need to address health issues with an approach that broadens the state of health in terms of the community. and of global value. This is a call for companies, academic research and healthcare facilities to share efforts and goals and to activate collaborations and synergies to address the health needs of the community and ensure social impact.

We strongly believe in the importance of these shared actions to which we wanted to make our contribution. In all the different forms of commitment there is the intent to facilitate scientific research, study, design and dissemination of multidisciplinary knowledge aimed at ensuring quality and homogeneity of access to health services and services for all citizens.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   October, 2021