Humanity 2.0 Launches New Global Wellness Platform to Implement Scientific Innovations in the Faith Sector

NEW YORK, March 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Humanity 2.0, the pioneering Vatican-affiliated foundation, has launched a new life science and wellness implementation arm, Humanity 2.0 Well-Being (HWB). The platform will harness the momentum of one of the world's fastest-growing industries, Wellness, estimated by the Global Wellness Institute to be $4.5 trillion and growing twice as fast as the world economy –  with the world's largest tangible platform, the Catholic Church. The combined integration is the first purpose-built platform of its kind in the world and will have profound impact on human health and well-being.

HWB partners with the world's leading scientific organizations to scale leading environmental and pregnancy well-being solutions through the Faith sector in order to catalyze global adoption. The Catholic Church is present in 196 countries (1.4 Billion people), manages 26% of the world's healthcare facilities and 150,000 schools. It is also the world's largest platform partner for new well-being projects. HWB's first wellness implementation project is scheduled for April 2020 in Vatican City.

"HWB was developed to harness the awesome force of paradigm shifts affecting our ecology, our health, and well-being into cohesive, tangible solutions," said Morad Fareed, CEO of HWB. "We will be implementing multiple projects throughout 2020 – both in Vatican City and at leading academic centers in the US – to demonstrate leading environmental and maternal wellness innovations, build marketplaces for their adoption and provide tangible results in people's lives. It is a great honor to be able to work with such committed colleagues helping to redefine and improve human well-being."

A social innovator and well-being pioneer, Fareed is a Co-Founder of Humanity 2.0 as well as the Co-Founder of Delos, the world's leading healthy environments company. As Delos Co-Founder, Fareed helped architect Delos' leading wellness science and solutions platforms from the company's inception to maturity, which include the WELL Building Standard and the Well Living Lab at the Mayo Clinic, and contributed to the growth of the Wellness Real Estate™ industry from $0 in 2010 to $197B in 2020. Delos' global footprint now spans over 500 million square feet across 4,200 projects in 58 countries.

The Humanity 2.0 project's catalyst is Pope Francis' 2015 Laudato Si encyclical. In his precedent-setting Papal letter, Pope Francis calls for greater concentration and commitment to the common challenges of our time, primarily centered on the environment and human ecology. Since its publication and the ensuing formation of the Dicastery of Integral Human Development in 2017, led by His Eminence Cardinal Peter Turkson, there has been a wellspring of initiatives to redefine business models and foster global collaborations around sustainability and well-being. In parallel, there has been an extraordinary rise in Environment Social Governance (ESG) investing, currently estimated to be $30 trillion and projected to reach as high as $50 trillion over the next 20 years. This large influx of investment capital will usher in a new era of rapid growth and implementation in the global well-being space.

"We are very proud to be taking this concrete step forward by introducing Humanity 2.0 Well-Being at this critical time – 5 years since Pope Francis' Ladauto Si – we see many of the global forces converging to advance human flourishing - especially in the areas of the environment, maternal well-being, and shifts towards preventive health," said Father Philip Larrey, Chair of Logic at the Pontifical Lateran University in Vatican City and Chairman of Humanity 2.0. "Our work to-date at Humanity 2.0 has been building up to this moment, and we are now ready to bring to bear all of the science and partnerships we have fostered into this new impact vehicle." 

Father David Nazar, Rector of the Papal Orientale Institute, has offered his encouragement. "Laudato Si is an important document that provides important insights as to how we should approach advancing human flourishing," said Father Nazar. "HWB is a promising new vehicle for translating the global mission of the Catholic Church and Pope Francis' into concrete interventions that will improve human health and well-being. I look forward to collaborating with HWB and contributing to ushering in a healthier future for humanity."

In addition to his past work on developing healthy environment innovations, HWB's CEO Fareed led work on maternal health innovation, which will be a key focus of the new HWB platform. Fareed is the founder and CEO of Square Roots, a maternal health and science organization founded in 2015 to develop free prenatal centers, fund scientific research, and support clinics throughout vulnerable neighborhoods within the U.S. Fareed also created the first maternal health scholarship fund at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health focused on students of Palestinian descent.

"Improving health outcomes and driving human performance is about more than just advancing 'wellness'. It is equally about designing and declaring what a future 'human' civilization should be built around," said Matthew Harvey Sanders, CEO of the Humanity 2.0 Foundation. "HWB to our global community at Humanity 2.0 is a way of re-orienting our species away from an unhealthy fixation on driving economic value to the more reasonable focus of accelerating human flourishing."

About Humanity 2.0
Humanity 2.0 is a unique organization - perhaps unlike any in the world - created to facilitate collaborative ventures between the historically siloed public, private, and faith-based sectors. Founded in 2018 in collaboration with the Dicastery for Integral Human Development at the Holy See (Vatican) led by His Eminence Cardinal Peter Turkson, the Humanity 2.0 Foundation has become a unique global force in its novel ability to identify important global initiatives, forge partnerships, and introduce scientific solutions for global impact. After two years of convenings in Vatican City with global luminaries from Ethics, Science, Health, and Technology, Humanity 2.0 Well Being was developed to focus more concretely on installing the world's leading environmental and maternal wellness solutions throughout the Faith Sector and beyond. https://humanity2-0.org/

SOURCE Humanity 2.0 Well Being

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