Comitetul Roman al Distributiei

The First International Congress ,,Health-Nutrition-Wellbeing,, took place at Aro Palace Hotel, Brasov, 15-17 October, 2011, under the patronage of the Romanian Patriarchate, The Romanian Academy, The Ministry of Public Health, The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, The Ministry of Education, Research, Innovation and Sport in collaboration with the International Association of Distribution (A.I.D.A Bruxelles) and EHI Retail Institute.

On that occasion a letter of intent had been signed (17.10.2011: New Global Initiative - www.european-retail-academy.org/index.php) by Professor Florian Popa, Rector of the „Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest and President of the Organizing Committee, and the three Honorary Presidents, Professor Eliot Sorel/George Washington University/USA, Professor Bernd Hallier/Germany, Professor John L. Stanton/University of Philadelphia, USA and other leading professors attending the event to cooperate in the future on the following topics:

A Romanian Competence Center for Global good agricultural practices (The GLOBALG.A.P standard is primarily designed to reassure consumers about how food is produced on the farm by minimizing detrimental environmental impacts of farming operations, reducing the use of chemical inputs and ensuring a responsible approach to worker health and safety as well as animal welfare) and “smartagrifood” (Future Internet for Safe and Healthy Food from Farm to Fork; smart farming – individual treatment of animals, plants or m2 of land at the right place and right time through sophisticated sensing & monitoring, decision support and precise application to improve efficiency, productivity, quality, flexibility and chain responsiveness; smart agri-logistics – is about intelligent matching demand and sourcing followed by smart transport and logistics of agri-food products by e.g. auto-identification, conditioned transport using sensors and control systems, remotely controlled early warning systems, etc.; smart food awareness – enabling the consumer with relevant information e.g. concerning safety, availability, health, environmental protection, animal welfare, etc. using chain information systems); enriching the Eurasian Youth Forum by a “Black Sea/Caspian Sea Area Initiative” to promote together higher education, innovation and the Bologna process; pushing that initiative of cosmopolitan Youth Organizations also via the Astana Economic Forum in Kazakhstan organized among others by the Eurasian Club of Scientists, the Club of Madrid and the G 20. The parties concerned want to use those three activities to create student exchanges by EU-projects like Tempus, Erasmus and Leonardo da Vinci as well as with transatlantic cooperation involving the USAID, USDA and identify the link between higher education, innovation the business community and future employment opportunities and sustainable development in the Eurasia region.

It is also worth to underline that the students’ scientific sessions started from considering, of course, that all our decisions are based on subjective value judgements, and economics - macroeconomics (the study of aggregate economic activities) or microeconomics (the study of economic behavior of individual decision making units) – makes these explicit. The three tasks of economics (a social science studying how individuals and organizations in society engage in the production, the distribution and the consumption of goods and services, being the discipline that deals with use of scarce resources to satisfy human wants and needs how best to use the resources available; or “healthcare” economics, this being the discipline/conceptual apparatus of economics applied to the topic/area of study of health) are: descriptive (quantification), predictive (identifying impact of change), evaluative (relative preference over situations). As what we want is unlimited and our resources are scarce, our choice is essential in achieving efficiency (the relationship between costs and benefits, maximising benefits for given resources; to establish efficiency we must assessed the benefits), being necessary to weigh relative benefits of each course of our action and choose the action which maximises our well-being. In order to assist policy decisions, we need an economic evaluation (a comparative analysis of alternative courses of action in terms of both their costs and consequences), differentiating measurement and valuation, avoiding ambiguity in assessing overall improvement or detriment in health, and understanding that allocative efficiency (producing the pattern of output that best satisfies the pattern of “consumer wants”) means that the value of benefits exceeds the opportunity cost. The students’ debates did allow the identification of the main requirements of health services (economy; effectiveness and efficiency; value for money; equity, main reason of government involvement in health care, and scarcity being the common root to efficiency and equity; ethical issues and so on). All the students agreed that: healthcare (health being a “state of complete physical, mental and social well-being” according to World Health Organization) should not be allocated according to income; in our globalized world we must have a holistic approach of the whole diet, of the traditional dietary patterns and of a sound mind in a healthy body in confering greater health benefits to the individuals and to the national and world economy.

All the debates were the true expression of the strugling for unity of knowledge beyond disciplines (transdisciplinarity), starting from reuniting a range of disciplines independently contributing to the „Health – Nutrition– Wellbeing” disciplinary investigation (multidisciplinarity) and especially from blending methods in order to generate new and improved tools better adapted to the „Health – Nutrition– Wellbeing” disciplinary research (interdisciplinarity).

We face today, both at the national and global level, a real serious challenge with „Health – Nutrition– Wellbeing”, requiring a more rapid adaptation to changing economic trends and new thinking, including the alternative food system, as a general expression of the concern for synergy between the social returns and business success and for improving the quality of our lives. As we have mentioned, the speech and action on this real serious identified challenge must and can be modified in order to preserve our life, opening up our mind and heightening the spirits to cross the “ocean of mistrust” whose huge waves crash against the shores of economic-social constructions, going beyond the fragments of understanding, interacting, getting involved, communicating and learning how to realize the proper change of our behavior. „The therapist” lies in each of those who commit to entering the partnership for „Health – Nutrition– Wellbeing” („SANABUNA” International), a partnership which can restore trust in life and in the market. The health of the people and of the economy lies in the centre of sustainable development and adapting the business accordingly.

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Special Guests

Professor Florian Popa, President of the Organizing Committee of the First International Congress ,,Health – Food – Welfare”, Rector of „Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacie in Bucharest, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of „Journal of Medicine and Life”, President of the Executive Board of Academy of Medical Sciences, President of Department of Surgery of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Vice President of the Romanian Society of Surgery, Member of International Society of Surgery, Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Palermo, and more. „Journal of Medicine and Life” is pointing the concerns about medicine and life within the increasing importance of the patient’s point of view, while quality of life is managed within medicine and even going beyond, the necessity of reconsidering the essential role of communication in an adequate offering of the right answers in accordance with the changes in medical care, inviting us to make responsible steps on the way of building a collaborative environment, turning up the conversation focused on patients’ lives and on the outcomes of the necessary mature actions as meeting and surpassing patient expectations.

Professor Eliot Sorel, M.D., D.L.F.A.P.A., is an internationally recognized medical leader, practicing psychiatric physician, educator, and health systems policy advisor. He directs and teaches courses in Health Systems, Health Diplomacy, and Global Governance and in Global Mental Health in the School of Public Health and Health Services at the George Washington University where he has professorial appointments in Global Health, Health Services Management and Leadership as well as in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Medicine. He is also the founder and chairman of the World Youth Democracy Forum at the Elliott School of International Affairs. Dr. Sorel is former President and Chairman of the Board of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, former President of the World Association for Social Psychiatry and of the Washington Psychiatric Society. He has served as a National Institutes of Health grants reviewer. In 1990 he founded the Conflict Management and Conflict Resolution Section of the World Psychiatric Association. He is a Life Member of the American Medical Association, a Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He obtained his B.A. from New York University, M.D. from the State University of New York and psychiatric training at Yale University. He has developed and led health systems in the Caribbean and North America, has consulted and taught in more than twenty countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. In addition to his academic, clinical practice, health policy and professional organizations activities, Dr. Sorel has served as an advisor on health systems for the Pan American and World Health Organizations, and as a print & electronic media commentator on health related matters. He is the author or coauthor of more than sixty scientific papers, book chapters and the editor of six books. His latest book, The Marshall Plan: Lessons Learned for the 21st Century, is available at OECD in Paris and accessible online at OECD in Paris. In 2008 Dr. Sorel organized a coalition of academic centers, governmental, nongovernmental, and professional organizations and convened the Lancet Global Mental Health Series, Americas’ Launch at PAHO/WHO in Washington, D.C., a catalytic and historic event promoting the integration of scientific evidence, advocacy and health policy with the goal of enhancing access to care and ending discrimination against the mentally ill, globally.

Professor Bernd Hallier, PhD, is Managing Director EHI Retail Institute (former EuroHandelsinstitut ), President of EuCVoT (European Competence Center for Vocational Training for Retail), President of the European Retail Academy (ERA), Chairman of the Advisory Board of EuroShop (world’s largest capital goods show in the retail sector), Member of the Board of AIDA Brussels, Member of the Astana Economic Scientists Club, Member of the Advisory Board of “Transparent Food” (the core relevance of transparency as a critical success factor and the need for the delivery of appropriate support by research has been emphasized in the Strategic Research Agenda/SRA of the European Technology Platform “Food for Life” from where this proposal evolved; it utilizes its links with the European-wide network of more than 30 National Technology Platforms to link up with stakeholders of the food chain including industry, consumers, research and sector representatives of different European countries),Chairman of the Board of the Orgainvent (the largest German labelling organization in the beef sector; the purpose of Orgainvent business is the “development and coordination of identification, assurance and merchandise management systems between the agricultural industry and the food retail trade”), Trustee of EHI Retail Institute at GLOBALG.A.P (a private sector body that sets voluntary standards for the certification of production processes of agricultural products around the globe; serves as a practical manual for Good Agricultural Practice – G.A.P anywhere in the world; the work of the Board and Committees is supported by FoodPLUS GmbH, a non-profit limited company based in Cologne, Germany, fulfilling a secretariat function for GLOBALG.A.P.; financial and legal ownership and responsibility for FoodPLUS GmbH is held by the EHI Retail Institute).

Professor Bernd Hallier began many years ago a fruitful collaboration with the prestigious Professor Klaus Toepfer (former Federal German Minister for Environment, former director of the United Nations Environment Program UNEP and initiator of the Kyoto Protocol), and with Dr. Angela Merkel (today Chancellor of the Federal Republic, and who pushed “environment” to become a high political issue during the EU-Presidency of Germany, in 2007).

Professor John L. Stanton, Saint Joseph’s University’s Philadelphia, Department of Food Marketing, Founding Editor of the „Journal of Food Products Marketing” and Editor of the „Journal of International Food and Agribusiness Marketing”. At Temple University in Philadelphia he formed the „Institute for Food Nutrition and Health” and consulted for many of America’s largest food companies including Campbell Soup Company, Frito Lay and Kellogg. At Saint Joseph’s University Dr. Stanton served two terms of chairman of the department and also directed a research center focusing on food and health. He has also worked as a food marketing practitioner, and he held the position of Vice President of Marketing of an international coffee company, worked in Germany for Tengelmann, owner of retail stores throughout Europe, and worked in advertising as director of research of a US advertising agency. Dr. Stanton has served as an expert and expert witness to many food and beverage companies including Whole Foods, Target, Coca Cola, Ahold, Supervalu, Boars Head, Safeway and many others. Dr. Stanton is also on the Board of Directors for Herr Foods, Premio Foods, David Michael Flavors and the Original Philadelphia Cheesesteak Company. He has been regularly quoted in the news media including CNN, the Today Show and NBC Nightly News and has been quoted in Forbes, Fortune, Advertising Age, Brand Week, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and many others. He hosted an episode of the History Channel’s Modern Marvels entitled, “The History of the Supermarket.” Dr. Stanton was also among the first to author articles on health and nutrition advertising claims with articles in the Journal of Advertising Research as early as 1987.

Professor Alexandru-Vlad Ciurea, Secretary General of the Organizing Committee of the First International Congress ,,Health – Food – Welfare”, President of the Romanian Society of Neurosurgery, Chairman Neurosurgical Clinic 1, „Bagdasar-Arseni” Hospital, Bucharest;

Vice-President WFNS “at large” (World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies); Chairman of the Nominating Committee of WFN; Vice-President AMN (Academia Multidisciplinaria Neurotraumatologica); Honorary President of the Romanian Society of Neurosurgery (RSN).

Dragoş Bucur, a young Romanian actor (University of Theater, Arts and Film I.L.C Caragiale, Buchares), a beloved character performer (Awards: GOPO, Best Actor, for role Cristi in “Police, adjective”; BAFICI, Best Actor, for role Cristi in “Police,adjective”; UCIN, Best Actor, for role Boogie from “Boogie”; GOPO, Best Actor, for role Boogie in “Boogie”; UCIN, Best Actor, for role Luca in “Furia”). He worked with Directors such as: Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Weir, Jesus del Cerro, Radu Muntean, Corneliu Porumboiu, Cristina Ionescu, Cristi Puiu.