Partner presentation: Jens Wilkens

Introducing Jens Wilkens, a long-time academic collaborator and Health Systems and Financing Analyst at Lund University. With a specialization in the UN’s Global Goal Number 3 – Good Health and Well-being, Wilkens is a captivating and knowledgeable lecturer, providing insights into the excellence and challenges of health systems on both a Swedish and global scale.

Why did you choose to work with your field of expertise/profession?

Ensuring that health care needs in the population are met is an eternal challenge for all countries. Medical opportunities increase and the society’s ability to fund them also increase over time. How to organize and fund health care in the best way possible, in a sector with so many competing objectives like quality and equity, is highly fascinating.

How long have you worked with Swedish HealthCare Academy?

10+ years

Tell us about your best lecturing memory i.e. feedback from a student or result from a lecture/assignment?

Sometimes a participant approaches me after a session, in person or in a personal email, and tells me that I opened up a new frontier in how they look at health financing and the society’s task in health. These are moments I remember. With Swedish Health Care Academy I often meet highly qualified health professionals, with whom I have insightful discussions.

What is the key to the Swedish healthcare system that makes it unique in a global context? 

First, one can talk about a ‘European value’ in health systems, which is that universal access is taken very seriously across most of the continent, although the organization to meet this ambition varies a lot. Then for Sweden, one feature that stands out is the collegial collaboration in both health governance and clinical work. In a relatively non-hierarchical society, dialogue about what needs to improve and how to get there is a creative process.