What is the symposium about? Why now?

We are living in a critical moment for health and wellbeing. It is the age of algorithms and artificial intelligence, when supposedly scientific arguments are front-page media fodder, and political leaders are actively reversing health-in-all-policies. Fear—or people’s attempts to draw us into a fearful way of being—underpins a majority of the messaging we receive. Who can we trust? What should we believe? How can we keep ourselves and others safe during these times?

These questions have difficult and complex answers. As such, this virtual symposium is as much about sharing our diverse, divergent, and/or historically minoritized health and wellbeing knowledge(s), as it is about demanding that health science–and the political systems and structures that support and constrain it–do better for all of us.