Two leading academics from the University of Bath’s Centre of 21st Century Public Health will take to the international stage in Iceland next month, as the Wellbeing Economy Forum returns to Reykjavík's iconic Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre on 16–17 April 2026.

Professor Anna Gilmore and Professor Harry Rutter will deliver keynotes to politicians, policymakers, and researchers from across the world at the Forum, which this year centres on the theme "The Power of Wellbeing – Redefining Success." The event challenges participants to reimagine what progress looks like, moving beyond GDP as the primary measure of a nation's success and towards frameworks that place human health, equity, and environmental sustainability at their core.

Among the distinguished speakers are Halla Tómasdóttir, President of Iceland and patron of the Forum; Michele Cecchini, Head of Public Health at the OECD and a leading health economist working at the intersection of health and economics; and Nicola Sturgeon, former First Minister of Scotland.

Professor Rutter, who serves as Chair of the External Expert Advisory Board for the EU Joint Action Prevent Non-Communicable Diseases (JA PreventNCD) project, a key supporter of the Forum, will present the findings of the Lancet Commission on Population Health Post COVID-19, which he co-chaired.

Bringing together experts from across the globe, the Commission examined three deeply interconnected challenges – infectious disease pandemics, non-communicable diseases, and environmental degradation – and the ways in which they interact across three critical systems: land use and transport, agriculture and food, and energy. Professor Rutter will set out the Commission's recommendations for what policymakers, civil society, and commercial organisations must do to reverse damaging trends and create conditions in which both people and planet can thrive.

Professor Gilmore, who leads the Local Health and Global Profits research consortium, will present on commercial determinants of health. Her work, including the Lancet Series on the commercial determinants of health, examines how corporate interests shape economies, policies and the environments in which people live, and the structural and policy changes needed to address this.

"Health harming industries damage individual lives, but it is the system that sustains these corporations and allows them to externalise the costs of that harm onto all of us and the planet. Real progress on human and planetary health demands we look upstream and redesign the conditions that have enabled these large multi and transnational commercial actors to harm with impunity while making it hard for small and medium enterprises, which make a disproportionate contribution to progressive economic growth, to compete," said Professor Gilmore.

Now in its fourth year, the Wellbeing Economy Forum is organised by the Icelandic Directorate of Health and supported by the European Union through the EU Health Programme. The event is held under the patronage of President Tómasdóttir, and reflects the mounting evidence that placing wellbeing at the heart of economies and policymaking is no longer optional, but a matter of urgency.