Tag: TIME100 Health 2026

During a busy year in global health, some of the most influential names driving innovation and shaping policy gathered Thursday night at the TIME100 Health Impact Dinner.

The 2026 TIME100 Health list honors a diverse group of scientists, doctors, advocates, educators, and other changemakers leading the way in pioneering breakthrough treatments, improving access to care, and creating awareness around emerging issues in public health. The evening featured a panel on preventative care moderated by TIME executive editor Nikhil Kumar and ended with a round of toasts from four honorees, who spoke about the importance of long-term funding for health, reinterpreting the story around aging, and altruism to help those in medical need.

Investing in health

The first toast of the night was given by Dr. Kiran Musunuru, director of the Genetic and Epigenetic Origins of Disease Program at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He and Dr. Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas used a personalized CRISPR therapy to tweak a mutation that turned the devastating genetic disorder of an infant child named KJ into a manageable condition. 

However, he noted that the monumental success of KJ’s treatment is the end result of decades of research that went into achievements like The Human Genome Project, rapid whole-genome sequencing, CRISPR gene editing, lipid nanoparticle formulations, RNA technology, representing the career work of many scientists behind the scenes. 

“We’re simply one link in a very long chain … and, of course, no part of that long chain could have been forged without strong support from the federal government” and funding from the National Institutes of Health, he said. “Equally important were the career staff at the Food and Drug Administration, who worked closely with us to strike the right balance of rigor, flexibility, and speed in developing the therapy for KJ.”

As things are starting to get interesting in medicine and health, “now is not the time to take the foot off the accelerator,” he said. 

An alternative narrative for aging

The second toast of the night was given by gerontologist Kerry Burnight who coined the term “joyspan” to shift the way people think about aging. “The tragedy of old age is not that we grow old and die. It’s that the process of doing so is made unnecessarily, and at times, excruciatingly painful and humiliating,” she said. While this narrative fuels the lucrative fear-based anti-aging industry, she invites us to visualize an alternative. 

“If we, people lucky enough to be aging as well as serving aging humans, see and celebrate the strengths and contributions of older people, rather than fall prey to the fantasy of never dying, not aging,” she said, “we can tackle these daunting challenges that our nation is facing.”

Shrinking the kidney transplant waiting list

Actor and director Jesse Eisenberg, who made a non-directed kidney donation to an anonymous matching patient next on the transplant list last year, closed out dinner with a final toast advocating for spreading the word on altruistic organ donations that could help the more than 90,000 people waiting for a kidney transplant. “I want to acknowledge that I am probably the dumbest person here and the least qualified to be talking right now,” he said, but he focused on what he did have experience in, which was the “risk-free” process behind his organ donation, which he knew he had to do after hearing about the concept of this type of donation on a podcast. 

“I never heard from anyone or read an interview with anybody who said they wrestled with the decision. … It was always: ‘I heard about it and signed up,’” he said. “Which makes me wonder if the problem isn’t convincing people to do this, but simply finding the people who already would.”

At the TIME100 Health Impact Dinner in New York City on Thursday, TIME executive editor Nikhil Kumar kicked off a panel discussion with one big question: Why is heart disease still the leading cause of death for men and women?

“Perhaps before we answer the question of why it’s the leading cause of death today,” replied Dr. Sadiya Khan, a professor of cardiovascular epidemiology and an associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, “we have to know where we started.”

She began by telling a story: In 1945, when then-President Franklin Roosevelt died, his death seemed “sudden and unexpected,” Khan said. But looking back at the notes from his doctors, Khan said, it’s clear that he had had very high blood pressure for years that was untreated.

“None of us would sit on that today,” Khan said. “We now know we can treat blood pressure. We can add years, decades of life by treating blood pressure. But we still don’t do it. And we still don’t achieve that success.”

Millions of people in the U.S. have high blood pressure, but many of them don’t receive adequate treatment, Khan said. “So I think the answer is: we’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.”

Khan, who was on the 2026 TIME100 Health list for her work on assessing cardiovascular risk early, was joined onstage Thursday by Arianna Huffington, the founder and chief executive officer of health and wellness company Thrive Global, and Victor Bultó, president of Novartis U.S., which sponsored the event in New York City.

Kumar turned the discussion over to Bultó, asking him why Novartis has not only developed therapies to tackle heart disease but has shifted towards addressing human behavior. Bultó, who was also on the 2026 TIME100 Health list, said that the technology that can reduce cardiovascular risk events and add years to many people’s lives already exists—but isn’t being utilized.

“We had to shift from being just a medical sciences company to start shifting into being a social sciences company to understand what is the underlying behavior that actually underpins this,” he said.

Bultó said that his team has learned that humans tend to be “wired to take the dopamine hit of something that gives us pleasure today and discount all the damage it’s going to do in the future.” Now, experts are advocating for greater understanding on how people can change those behaviors.

Khan also talked about her efforts in targeting young women to help them avoid cardiovascular issues later in life. She said that for many young women, healthcare is often focused around pregnancy. And many women experience complications during pregnancy, such as high blood pressure, preeclampsia, and gestational diabetes. She herself had gestational diabetes, and she hadn’t realized that it has a connection to heart disease.

“We’re learning so much more that these early markers can actually be signals and be a red flag about the future. And the important thing is not that that’s scary or that means that I’m going to have a heart attack, but that I can do something about it now,” Khan said. “I can focus on the health behaviors that are going to prevent this from progressing and really make a difference. And with that information, we can empower people—young women, young men—to really be able to take hold of their own health much earlier than we used to think about it.”

“I mean, even today, if you Google heart attack or heart disease, you get a picture of an older person, and that’s not where we should be,” she continued. “We have to start much earlier.”

Huffington called it “inspiring” that both Khan, a prominent doctor, and Bultó, the head of a big pharma company, were willing to talk about the impact that both medicines and behaviors can have on human health.