Museum of Health Futures

The Museum of Health Futures is an ongoing, futures-thinking driven exhibition first launched at the Regional Committee Meeting of the World Health Organization Western Pacific Regional Office (WHO WPRO) from 21-25 October 2024. It is the culmination of a six-month futures-thinking process that began on World Health Day in April 2024, marking WHO's 76th anniversary. This process is rooted in the belief that, as WHO celebrated 75 years of public health milestones, it should also look towards the next 75 years. The recent nomination of Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala as WPRO’s new Regional Director and the development of WPRO’s vision for the next five years provided an ideal moment to explore how health might be weaved in the future. The process has been developed by the WHO WPRO Strategic Dialogue Unit (DIA) in the Data, Strategy and Innovation Division (DSI), in collaboration with MOD. (Museum of Discovery) and researchers at the University of South Australia.

The exhibition features 15 past and 15 future artefacts as part of an exhibition exploring health futures. This guide provides background information on the design of the exhibition, the past and future artefacts included in the exhibition, and first-person narratives that bring each future artefact to life.

The development of the future artefacts was informed by creative workshops with WHO WPRO staff and partners during World Health Day in April 2024. These workshops engaged participants in imagining futures by considering a timeline ranging from the 1940s towards the year 2100.

The first workshop co-created a range of possible futures by drawing on the diverse perspectives and expertise of WHO WPRO staff. These possible speculative events were collated into thematic clusters such as The Interplanetary Health Organization and Future Fertility. These clusters were then transformed into scenarios that provided backdrops for a range of health futures. For example, one theme that emerged from the speculative events was Pollution, which was transformed into the scenario below:

In total ten possible scenarios were created; you can find these at the end of the guide.

The scenarios were taken into further workshop processes with partners. Creative practice methods using Lego Serious Play® were deployed so that participants could imagine the worlds of these scenarios and the people within them. Participants unearthed insights into health futures through the rapid building of future artefact prototypes. Ideas which have gone on to shape the speculative future artefacts present in the Museum of Health Futures.

These workshops took place whilst WHO WPRO was celebrating the 75^th year of the World Health Organization. The Museum of Health Futures includes objects marking milestones and breakthroughs in public health from the previous 75 years. Inventions such as sunscreen in the 1930s, the LifeStraw in 2005 and WHO’s 2020 ‘Regional action plan on healthy ageing for the Western Pacific’, demonstrate how numerous projects have significantly impacted the health of populations worldwide.

Similarly, the Organization and its people are working towards ambitious goals for the next 75 years, to create better health for all in the Western Pacific Region. In the next five years, a new vision, ‘Weaving Health for Families, Communities and Societies in the Western Pacific’ will guide the work of WPRO in a rapidly changing world. It recognizes the need to be future-ready—anticipating, adapting to, and embracing change.

The new vision for the Region is symbolized by a woven mat, where the three horizontal strands of pandanus represent WHO’s actions, and the five vertical strands represent actions by Member States and other stakeholders. These vertical strands have been used to underpin the exhibition’s themes:

• Transformative primary care for universal health coverage
• Climate-resilient health systems
• Resilient communities, societies, and systems for health security
• Healthier people throughout the life course
• Technology and innovation for future health equity

An additional theme, WHO transformation, has been added to encapsulate the horizontal strands.

To prompt creative thinking about what might be possible for the future, past and speculative objects have been brought to life by artists and makers working with the WHO WPRO DIA and MOD. teams.

Visitors of the Museum of Health Futures have the opportunity to interact and engage with objects across 150 years, enabling them to put their work into context as important and necessary within this extended vision. The Museum of Health Futures aims to provoke ideas and generate action in the present to fulfil our renewed vision of ‘Weaving Health.’