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OVIDcast by OVID Health, a global healthcare communications consultancy, explores current issues in the health and life sciences sector.
In each series, we explore a new topic, speaking to prominent figures within the healthcare landscape.
[00:00:00] Jenny Ousbey: Hello, and welcome to The Health Change Maker podcast. I'm Jenny Ousbey, founder and CEO of Ovid Health, a global healthcare communications consultancy, also known as the Health Change Makers. In this new series, I'll be interviewing experts from politicians and patients to tech founders and CEOs. All with a shared passion for improving the well being of people and driving meaningful change. Join me as I meet incredible Change Makers and be inspired to become a Change Maker yourself.
Well, hello and welcome to our next episode of Health Change Maker podcast. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Sirpa Pietikäinen. Now Sirpa has had a really varied career, super excited to talk to you today. So for a bit of background, Sirpa was a minister in the Finnish government, Minister for the Environment.
She's also been an MEP in the European Parliament for about 16 years. She's also chair of the European Alzheimer's Association and I think is incredibly passionate about sustainability. There's also lots of health topics that she has championed over the years, and ultimately for us, she very much embodies the Change Maker spirit. And so today we're going to explore about Sirpa, what drives her, what motivates her, who inspires her as well to be a Change Maker and then hopefully find out a bit about your journey in the process. So welcome.
[00:01:44] Sirpa Pietikäinen: Thank you very much. I'm so delighted to be in your podcast discussing about these topics, and by the way, thank you for your perfect pronunciations. These European names can be a bit challenging, I know.
[00:01:57] Jenny Ousbey: Oh no, my pleasure, my pleasure, and so I wanted to start off and dive straight into it because when I was preparing for our conversation today, I read this amazing quote from you and it was saying, you know, you've described politics as your way of loving the world. And I love that. I love that phrase. So can you tell me a bit about what politics means to you?
So how is it your way of loving the world?
[00:02:25] Sirpa Pietikäinen: That is the best way I can describe my connection. How do I relate to politics? And it is a bit like, you know, if you would be sitting in a cafeteria or wherever on the bench and you see a person, it's a young child or an elderly person, falling down or being hit by the car, you just don't continue sitting and looking and saying to your friends, whoa, that really looks bad.
I hope someone is going to do something about it, and then you turn your head off and, continue whatever you were talking about and drinking your coffee. You would rush there, you would try to do all the best, and you would try to call the ambulance and so forth, and then you wouldn't be sure that you have all the best ways and means.
You try not to cause damage, you try to help, and you know that you are not the doctor and you can't make the diagnostics perfectly, nor the operations or whatever, you know, stabilization of the neck and so forth. So this is my relation to politics, and as long as I see people and planet falling around me. It is an urge on me to try to, to be part of the solution.
[00:03:45] Jenny Ousbey: I like that idea about politics not being a bystander, and I think, how do you try and encourage people to feel that same, that instinct, I think, to be involved. Do you think that the people coming into politics now, as opposed to ten years ago, twenty years ago, do you think they still have that instinct?
Do you think it's harder to find people who will get involved if they see something happening?
[00:04:13] Sirpa Pietikäinen: Well, I would say on the basis it is the same, actually the same that it was before I came to politics. The big majorities of people are feeling in the same way, and we might have the disputes about, whether the patient should be turned on the back or just left as it is. So, what you do. But then again, of course, there are different kind of people in politics.
Those people that do not care or are not certain when it is, and when they don't feel that kind of an urgency. It's really easy to see in social and health matters and in environmental matters. People who do not feel that this is an urgency, it's like, you know, whipped cream on the cake, you might have it, you might not have it, and still a perfect cake.
And if you don't have that much of a money, and if you have other urgent pressures, then you just sort of leave it away. And then if I feel that it is a urgency, of course, I, urge people to act, and some people might be a bit reluctant. But then again, what is actually increasing? And I'm really worried about that is this kind of, restlessness and hate that is increasing in politics.
This is something what we saw in twenties all over the Europe and in the world. It's like, you know, you go and vote or you candidate because you want to lift your middle finger and show to the world, I dislike you. I want out. I don't want to have climate change. I don't want to share my income, let's say through tax distribution. I don't want to change. And then the only thing you want is, I want to have it as it was, and I want to have it for myself. I do not care what happens to the others, and of course, you might have guessed already, this is the authoritarian populism, far right, nationalistic movements. And they, those really could make a big damage to politics. Because, you can't help the patient by just saying, I don't want, I want to have another cup of coffee. This worries me, I said.
[00:06:37] Jenny Ousbey: Well, and I think two things. I think one thing is always say yes to the whipped cream on the cake. You'll never regret it. And I think the second thing is that, this idea, and I think you're right about the danger of the planet being shoved into a corner because of, you know, far right or popularism.
What do you think we can do to reclaim the narrative that saving the planet is urgent, as you say, getting across that message that it's urgent when people are just looking at how they can pay their bills, how they can get a job?
[00:07:10] Sirpa Pietikäinen: Well, it is a bit rope walking. It's difficult, because if you, you don't have the sense of urgency. You do not act. And then if you scare people off, you are a bit like a preacher in the corner of streets. Jesus is coming and everybody's circulating on the other side of the street. No, no, no, no. I don't want to hear. I just want to go and do my daily shopping.
So how do we distribute the knowledge that there's urgent need of action, and then simultaneously, the actions are not that difficult. They are changed, but it is a bit like, you know, starting running or going to gym. You first think it is more difficult than what it is actually when you start doing it. And then that you get the results and then like going to gym. After a while, you feel far, far better when you start exercising. So it is sort of this process of starting and accepting the change. And then again, and this is another part that I'm nowadays very excited. I usually call it the Polish wonder.
The Poland was very much in the pathway of the Hungary and what they did in various parties simultaneously on last elections were basically not just sort of a dropping emails or a thumbs up in X, but calling to people and saying, look, the institutions do not survive, and the democracy do not survive if you are a bystander.
You need to support it, and if you think, well, the EU is okay, well, of course, you know, something is okay. You need to show that it is okay by voting and by distributing the word and not just sort of leaving it to someone else. And this is, I guess, the hardest obstacle, as I said, if people are lukewarm happy with the EU and climate politics, they think, okay, I don't have anything to complain. I think we are doing, I guess, a good job. And I don't know even what would be my preferences, what to do the next is it's agricultural energy or whatever. And I don't know what the candidates really are doing. So it's easier for me not to vote. Well, someone else who knows the things better is doing it.
And the, the hardship is that, you get these people activated and voting and making a conscious choice, because then again, when you read the media polls. The majority of the people are for more ambitious climate and biodiversity politics. They are for more social and health oriented politics, and they are much more prepared to act than what you can read out of them, the vote results.
[00:10:16] Jenny Ousbey: Do you think that the, pandemic made the debate and people's, I suppose, activism around the planet kind of more or less pronounced?
[00:10:27] Sirpa Pietikäinen: Pronounced in a way, yes, but what is the challenging thing is that we usually talk and think only one thing at a time, and now it is the war on Ukraine. And so it seems it fills the people's head 90%. We need more tanks and more ammunition and more troops and we need to safeguard the Ukraine. And then, you know, you can leave the rest to wait.
But it is like a patient who would need to go to, to an emergency. You can't wait before you do whatever you are doing first. So we don't see that actually with the climate and, and the planetary crisis, there's this kind of an urgent need to start acting. It's like a bit like, you know, I can't start running and exercising for marathon a week before.
And so people think that, okay, we are in climate crisis or biodiversity crisis in 2050. We do not act. Well, there's a lot of time. What's the hustle about it? We can always start, you know, on the next decade or the decade after. But then when we know how gradual and slow the changes are, it's a bit like, you know, improving your physical condition for the marathon.
It takes at least two years if you start from the zero, so you can't think, okay, but there's still a lot of, it's next year, or, okay, and then you start running week before because it's just, insurmountable task to fulfill.
[00:12:05] Jenny Ousbey: I think it's also about there's so much evidence going on right now about what's happening with the planet when you look at Antarctica or when you look at the rising sea levels. When it is quite literally that drip drip drip effect of people reading those statistics but the message being so diluted I think sometimes that as you say if it's not literally that the rising sea levels are not literally coming into their living rooms right now, then you know what are they going to do. And I'm interested about when you were, so before you became involved in politics and when you were a school child was it something that, this passion for being the person who runs towards the crisis rather than away from the crisis. Where did that start? Did it start, when you were at school or even younger?
[00:12:53] Sirpa Pietikäinen: I think that the origins are already even younger in two or three parts. One is that my mother was a nurse and I learned, and she was an activist in Red Cross too, and I think that a lot of, she never sort of intentionally told me do this and that, but sort of her example was this kind of a go for it. Do what you can, help people.
And she was a great nature lover, like my father was. And so I was in the forests, before I could walk. And, so I guess I grew for these two facts, to love to the nature. Plus then, we had a dog and I was sort of, crawling around the living room with the dog. And so being sort of among the others in quotes, animals and in the nature was sort of a natural part of me.
And my mother being interested in the environment told me about before I was in school, of course, being a nurse about the hygiene and its importance, but also the pesticides and how important it is that you wash your vegetables, your veggies and not to have the pesticides there and stuff like that. So I grew gradually on that kind of a perspective or attitude, but the inspiration actually came at school.
I had a wonderful, I still love her, wonderful teacher of biology at school. On those days, she was a young woman telling about development, the developing countries, telling about the animals and, what kind of a destruction the pesticides and poisons are doing for the animals, telling about how the nature works and all that kind of a stuff.
And that really sort of, got me into that. And since that it was quite array of teachers of a biology that had been my great inspiration, and as a matter of fact, that was my first love to be a biologist. And then for a reason and another, I did not end up over there. I ended up studying economics and business administration.
On those days, I, I was not that excited about that. That was sort of a rational choice because my teachers were telling, okay, you can't be a researcher in biology or anthropology. No, you can't be a Jane Goodle. That was my great, great, this kind of a dream, and I wanted to go to Borneo and, and to study the Orangutans,
[00:15:38] Jenny Ousbey: I'm laughing because that was literally my dream when I was a child. I wanted, yeah, yeah, I wanted to go to Rwanda and study the gorillas.
[00:15:46] Sirpa Pietikäinen: Okay so you know the story.
[00:15:48] Jenny Ousbey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so funny.
[00:15:50] Sirpa Pietikäinen: So my teacher told me that no, you can't do it. Probably if I would have been more stubborn and rebellious those days, I could have done it. But then I ended up doing something serious. And then later on, actually, I've been very happy with that background, because then when you can literally read the economics and you understand how it works, you are not so blindfolded believing everything that is said to you, okay, you can't change, this is going to destroy the European economy and no, no one's business is going to be successful, because then you know this, ah, well, actually how I learned it at the university wasn't like that.
[00:16:32] Jenny Ousbey: Yeah.
[00:16:32] Sirpa Pietikäinen: But it is this kind of a disruptive changes and gradual changes and good strategies and whatever those stories were. So that is my sort of a background how I came to be in politics and in those days of course the politics was very, very popular among the young people at that school.
[00:16:51] Jenny Ousbey: That's amazing. Well, look what you can get if you have the magic ingredients of an inspirational teacher. Making the right choices at the right time. Sometimes making the sensible choices, but I'm sure you've also made irrational choices as well, and I think having that passion instilled by parents at an early age as well, I think is just absolutely 100 percent important.
[00:17:13] Sirpa Pietikäinen: Yeah, and I said rational and irrational. It is just sort of an added ingredients to the studies in economics and business administration. I never left my first love, so to say. I've studied and I read quite a lot about ethology, about animal behavior, ecosystems studies and so forth. So I've stayed actually beside with that.
[00:17:39] Jenny Ousbey: I'm sure that studying animal behavior has served you well in dealing with politicians, Sirpa, in the European Parliament, and have you managed to go and meet the orangutans in later life?
[00:17:50] Sirpa Pietikäinen: No. But Jane Goodall, I have met her several times. Not the Orangutans, but Jane Goodall, yes, and it gave me a very great impression.
[00:18:00] Jenny Ousbey: Oh, amazing. Okay. Well, maybe this year or next year, you can book yourself on a trip to go see the orangutans in Borneo.
Moving on to a different topic of health and the work that you've been doing as a Change Maker in healthcare. So I know that you're really passionate about areas like women's health and allergies and asthma, and obviously Alzheimer's and your position as chair of the European Alzheimer's Association.
So I'm really interested, you were talking earlier about the battle to save the planet, and there are other battles that are going on in the world right now, and one of them is how do we help, you know, the next generation and the next generation combat Alzheimer's, and there are lots of promising innovation and science on the horizon that a lot of people hope will one day mean that, you know, the terrible diagnosis of Alzheimer's may be something that won't be something in the future.
So I suppose what makes you worried and what makes you positive about the battle to cure Alzheimer's?
[00:19:00] Sirpa Pietikäinen: I guess I have more positive notes following the research that I have been doing more than 30 years. We know more and more, and even though we haven't found the magical solution, to prevent it or to cure it, we have more and more medication. We know about the risk factors and we can try to prolong the onset and then what we can do is that we can even alleviate the symptoms like the new brainwashing systems with ultrasound.
So there's a lot of positive things going. And especially on the attitudes, because I think that none of the diseases are pleasant or acceptable. I wouldn't, if I would have a choice, personally I don't want to have it, but I wouldn't go easily and say, okay, I prefer to have a cancer or I prefer to go paralyzed instead of an Alzheimer's.
And in Alzheimer's, many things can be actually very good if the society is supportive. But it's like, to me if someone would come and say, oh my, oh my god, oh dear, oh dear, you can't even sing. How horrible life that must be. And I would hear that in and out many times per day. Of course, I would be very depressed, or, oh my dear, oh my dear, you wouldn't ever succeed in the Miss Universe Contest, and oh my dear and dear, you are so short also, oh my dear and dear.
And so if you concentrate only on things that people do not have, then, of course, you can make them very depressed, but if you concentrate a bit like, you know, the small child can't run, and it can't do much, and in some ways can't even speak, and you are delighted about everything what they can do. So if you can create a positive environment for memory disabled people, actually, the life can be pretty good.
So it is very much about the stigma. It's very much about the attitudes. It's very much how you plan the system, both the digital systems and the physical systems are there aiding visual hints and aiding solutions, a bit like, you know, you're paying in the clinic, yellow or red arrows to follow to find the place.
And there are many things what we can do to make the life better. And what I'm worried is that how still fast and slow the development has been. So our societies are not yet adapted to the fact that our populations in general are aging. Point number one and point number two, one third of these people probably have some stage of memory disabling issues.
So we would need to have them pretty fast actually on place, and then of course, I've been hearing, more than 30 years about the fact that, okay, after 10 years, we have the medication after 10 years. So I, I have a bit of skepticism or hope it's not realism. Are we going to have the cure? After 10 years or not?
[00:22:18] Jenny Ousbey: Yeah, well I think we all have to hope and I'm definitely getting the impression that you're somebody who has a growth mindset in terms of how you go about the world and, you know, making change happen. I'm interested about, so you're obviously somebody who rushes into the road to save the patient and makes change happen.
So who do you feel is a Change Maker? So who inspires you?
[00:22:42] Sirpa Pietikäinen: Well, of course, there are quite a number. I could say it is, of course, my mother with her attitude. It is quite a number of my colleagues who join, and I join, of course, their initiatives. It's sort of not sitting hands in the lap and waiting what's going to happen. But if you look sort of these, renowned big figures, it's Mahatma Gandhi and the principle of being part of the solution.
You are either part of the problem or you are part of the solution. So the silence, or not acting is not the option. It is, the problem in the world is not the people who do actively bad, but the big part who does not care. And so this is this kind of an urge to be active, and sometimes sort of a thinking out of the box and being slightly radical and with a big heart.
And of course, great lady Jane Goodall is a perfect example of that. Doing things that was not expected to be done and especially in those days and by a woman and actually with her action doing quite a lot good for environmental attitudes and saving basically the gorillas with her activities.
[00:23:59] Jenny Ousbey: I love that, and I think you've written before about gender balance and in politics and something that, you know, we need to get right. And I'm thinking about if you're a young woman thinking about coming into politics, feeling a bit overwhelmed about the route into politics. Is there anything that you would say to that person that would mean that they would take that leap?
And also what advice you would give them and whether you think it's better now if you're entering politics as a woman.
[00:24:29] Sirpa Pietikäinen: It is better and it is worse. It is better in the way that, we do have more women in politics. The politics is more used to women. You find more colleagues and it's easier to work your way through. But what is worse is the social media and the hate speech. And I'm really, really worried about that. I do get my share myself, but sometimes I say that I'm a big hippo in that sense, with a very strong skin and smiling face and I do not care about it that much.
[00:25:04] Jenny Ousbey: Do you always not care or do sometimes is what's said on social media hurt?
[00:25:08] Sirpa Pietikäinen: You just grow into it, and it was not in early days as much as it is nowadays. Of course you dislike it and it is inappropriate, but you more tend to see it as a problem of those who shout and speak and are vulgar because it's their way, it's the wrong way, but it's their way to speak out their pain and worry.
I mean, so if you try to see that, okay, you are not actually not the problem, you are just the target, uh, that, that gets the the hit. But then again, it's more than tenfold if you compare to male colleagues. And especially it is strong for younger women. But it's very often, it's very violent, it is very vulgar, it is sexual, it is literally inappropriate.
And then what would be my advice? It's threefold. Firstly, you can do it. You are beautiful and you are right. And then the second would be contact me, or there's plenty of other women, female politicians like me. You are not alone,
And you can share your experience, you get advice. I like to do mentoring to young, female politicians. I like to support if I can. And, then it is this kind of, and I've, I've, I've gotten very good and wonderful support by the other female colleagues, you know, throughout my political career. And it's important to see this. You are not alone. You get advice, you get support. Someone is going to hold your hand if that is necessary.
Someone is sort of having your back because, well, hey, we need to save the world.
[00:27:01] Jenny Ousbey: Well, exactly. We're so busy saving the world that we need to reach out. And I think that for a young woman thinking about coming into politics and knowing that there are people out there who they can look up to, who can be role models, and who they can see literally doing it. And I think that you know, we could all work together to find the solutions to the tech companies, to the governments, to the schools in terms of education when it comes to kind of social media abuse of women and girls, and, you know, we can't solve it alone, but we can solve it, I think, all together. I'd love to keep chatting to you, but I've got one last question for you, Sirpa. And that is around someone listening to this. Thinking, how on earth can I be a change maker? I don't feel empowered enough. I don't feel confident enough.
I don't know what my change is going to be. I know I want to do something, but I don't know how to do it. What would you say to that person listening to our conversation?
[00:27:55] Sirpa Pietikäinen: First of all, if you think that you don't know enough, you're probably right, but I don't either, because every day there's new news about what is happening in the Gaza or is the Gulf Stream going to turn its route or slow down or what it's going to get. So it is a learning process and you learn by coming in and doing so.
Don't be intimidated by that. Then the second is you probably know more than what you think. When I was a young politician in my very early years, and I heard some, this kind of a very conservative, populistic male talk, no, we can't do this and we can't do that. I was always thinking what I do not understand because I see it so differently.
And why when I learned it in the universities this way, and they say totally differently that you need to go on subsidizing fossil fuels and so forth. And then it took me like, you know, five or ten years when I realized. That yes, actually I do get it, but it is them who do not get the point. And so, sometimes you need to have a bit of reliance on yourself and pat your shoulder.
You probably know enough and you'll learn. Then the second point is that, you learn and you can have an impact by being part and doing the activities with the others, and this is this together, and to me, it is very important. No one is going to solve the problems, but together we can do it. And so it is better than just sort of a stay at home and feel anxious about all the problems.
It is at least try to do something. You can make the difference.
[00:29:48] Jenny Ousbey: I love it. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed listening to this today and, looking forward to seeing what other change making things you're going to do this year and next year, and if anyone's listening and you want to have a role model to look up to, then look to Sirpa. Thank you so much for your time today.
[00:30:05] Sirpa Pietikäinen: Thank you so much. It was nice talking with you.
[00:30:07] Jenny Ousbey: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Health Change Makers podcast. If you enjoyed it, why not share with a friend and subscribe so you never miss an episode.