May 5 8:30 AM - Keynote: Disrupting the Healthcare Heist: Employer Strategies That Fight Back

• Identify the contractual mechanisms and financial incentives that allow health plan administrators and PBMs to extract value from employer-sponsored plans and how to detect them in your own contracts.
• Apply a fiduciary accountability lens to employer health plan governance, understanding your legal obligations, your vendors' obligations, and the questions you have the right (and duty) to ask.
• Evaluate specific employer-led strategies, including direct contracting, reference-based pricing, claims data access, and coalition purchasing, that have produced measurable cost containment and restored plan integrity.

May 5 9:30 AM - Reactor Panel: What Unite, Demand, Disrupt Looks Like in Action

• Unpack why access, cost, and quality remain stubbornly misaligned and where disruption is already gaining traction.
• Explore what’s fueling erosion (or rebuilding) the healthcare system today.
• Define how stakeholders, especially employers, can unite, demand accountability, and ignite real change across the system.

May 5 11:00 AM - Breakout Session: Fixing Work, Not the People: Rethinking Workplace Mental Health Strategy – Randolph Room

• Understand how workplace factors shape employee mental health and wellbeing.
• Identify the role employers can play in creating a healthier, more supportive work environment.
• Explore practical ways to support mental health through manager support, training, and broader workplace strategies.
• Leave with ideas to strengthen resilience and improve the employee experience at work.

May 5 11:00 AM - Breakout Session: GLP-1s and Obesity: Where Medical Necessity, Fiduciary Duty & Traditional Benefit Design Collide – Madison Room

• Identify how employers can make educated decisions about why and how to cover Anti-obesity Medication (i.e. GLP-1s).
• Understand how evolving economic and safety considerations around GLP-1 therapies are reshaping employer responsibilities.
• Learn how other employers have approached the design of their GLP-1 benefit strategies, including cost drivers and implementation considerations.

May 5 11:00 AM - Breakout Session: Inspiring Action with Your Wellbeing Program – State Room

• How to get comfortable with “taking a risk” in communication with great results.
• How do wellbeing needs and communication evolve over time.
• Launching lifestyle accounts for a personalized approach to wellbeing.

May 5 1:00 PM - Employer Panel: Transparency Is a Fiduciary Imperative – Pharmacy Gains Traction; Medical Benefits Must Follow

• Recognize the challenge – Employers are expected to act in the best interest of their members but often lack access to the data needed to evaluate cost, quality, and outcomes.
• Leverage lessons from pharmacy benefits – Get insights from recent PBM legislation to guide approaches to medical benefits, which remain opaque, fragmented, and difficult to audit.
• Fulfill fiduciary responsibility – Be part of efforts to expand transparency across medical benefits to inform purchasing, strengthen vendor accountability, and drive improved financial outcomes.

May 5 2:10 PM - From Blueprints to Practice: Employer Application Stories

• The Hidden Health Crisis: Understanding Autoimmune Disease in the Workplace
• Recognize the hidden cost burden of autoimmune disease in your workforce.
• Diagnose the gaps in conventional benefits design for autoimmune populations.
• Apply a framework for rethinking benefits strategy to close the autoimmune blind spot.
• An Employer’s Blueprint for High-Impact Cancer Care Across a Distributed Workforce
• Recognize why cancer demands a more focused strategy built on access, speed, and direct clinical care.
• Describe how integrating oncologist-led clinical interventions into an existing benefits ecosystem can accelerate engagement and care delivery.
• Evaluate early outcomes that illustrate saving lives, improving the patient experience, and driving down cancer spend.
• Optimizing MSK Care: Cost, Access and Engagement
• Understand the direct link between member engagement and measurable outcomes-including pain reduction, cost savings and ROI-backed by an employer's performance data
• Discover why traditional communication approaches struggle in today's crowded HR landscape, and learn a few strategies to cut through competing vendor messages and benefit announcements.
• Explore how population-specific messaging channels (rather than broad, generic outreach ) can unlock higher engagement rates and reach members at the right moment in their care journey.
• Learn why Women's Pelvic Health is driving disproportionate engagement despite lower representation in the workforce population-and what this reveals about untapped opportunities in targeted program communications.

May 5 3:25 PM - Fireside Chat: Employer Insights on Plan Design Tactics for GLP-1’s, Value-Based CoE’s and Cell & Gene Therapies

• Explore how employers are preparing for the future evolution of obesity management benefits by balancing GLP-1 access, clinical support, and cost controls.
• Understand how implementing a Centers of Excellence (COE) strategy can reduce unwarranted costs in surgical care while improving quality and increasing employee engagement.
• The employer experience around coverage of CGTs including the decision-making process, stakeholder involvement, lessons learned and go forward strategies.

May 5 4:15 PM - Keynote: How Employers Can Disrupt a Broken System: The Future of PBMs

• Analyze federal reforms and impacts to employers –100% rebate pass throughs, detailed fees and compensation disclosures, regulatory and legal landscape.
• Identify state-level acceleration – PBM licensure, formulary transparency, and reporting mandates.
• Fulfill fiduciary duty – evaluate cost drivers such as spread pricing and distinguish between financial vs. clinically driven decisions to ensure alignment with employee outcomes and total cost of care.
• Implement actionable strategies to increase employer leverage and accountability.

May 6 8:40 AM - Keynote: Fault Lines in Healthcare: Employer Responses to a System Under Strain

• Explore safety net access vulnerabilities, including publicly-funded health plans, rural providers, pharmacies, and academic medical centers.
• Review purchaser spend management strategies, including specialized management for GLP-1s, behavioral health, and shoppable procedures.
• Examine care decision making influencers, including direct-to-consumer sources, physician practice owners, artificial intelligence, and tech vendors.

May 6 9:45 AM - From Blueprints to Practice: Employer Application Stories

• Solving the Metabolic Health Problem: GLP-1s Not Required
• How addressing metabolic disease supports clinical outcomes and protects healthcare budget.
• Peer insights from implementing a novel approach to address metabolic-related costs.
• What data signals leading employers are using to measure clinical and financial impact.
• A Data Backed Approach to Bending the Maternity Cost Curve
• Why traditional fertility benefits increase risk, cost, and poor outcomes.
• How early, managed intervention improves outcomes before high cost events.
• Proof that better clinical outcomes and multimillion dollar savings can coexist.
• How an accountable benefit design delivers transparency, predictability, and measurable ROI.
• Employer Strategies to Reduce Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in High-Risk, High-Cost Members
• Explore employer-led vaccination approaches to improve outcomes and reduce costs in high-risk, high-cost populations.
• Understand how vaccine hesitancy and polarization contribute to misinformation, and how cultural dynamics influence vaccination behaviors.
• Develop approaches focused on vendor alignment, and culturally competent communication—to improve vaccination rates and reduce risk in vulnerable populations.

May 6 11:05 AM - Breakout Session: Identifying the Burden of Inflammatory Bowel Disease and the Impact on Employees, Employers & Payers – Randolph Room

• Understand the direct and indirect costs of IBD for employers, employees, and payers.
• Explore strategies to better support employees with IBD through early intervention, care coordination, and benefits design approaches.
• Recognize the clinical, emotional, and productivity impacts of IBD on employees.

May 6 11:05 AM - Breakout Session: Improved Benefits Engagement = Simplified Design + Simplified Communications – Madison Room

• Reallocation of resources that enhances the employee value proposition through plan design.
• How to communicate with hard to reach employees who don’t sit behind a desk.

May 6 11:05 AM - Breakout Session: Why is Cancer So Expensive and What Can HR Managers Do About It? – State Room

• What’s really driving the ever-rising cost to treat cancer in your population.
• How new technology like multi-cancer early detection (MCED) testing can positively impact financial and health outcomes in your organization.
• What organizations like yours are doing to go further with cancer screenings?

May 6 12:35 PM - Employer Keynote: From Personal Moment to Organizational Movement – Rethinking Benefits with Purpose

• Understand how to build a cohesive, well-integrated vendor ecosystem.
• Explore approaches for prioritizing quality of care and the employee experience.
• Recognize why designing for dignity, access, and experience leads to stronger outcomes.

May 6 1:25 PM - Fireside Chat: Employer Insights on Reducing Claims Costs, Hidden Drivers of Healthcare Spend, and Managing Cost Via Upstream Interventions

• Identify the often-overlooked drivers of healthcare spend by leveraging data analytics and uncovering potential cost leakage.
• Determine what questions to ask vendors about high-cost claim patterns.
• Understand the importance of primary care at the center of the care model to reduce unnecessary urgent care utilization and streamline condition management.

May 6 2:25 PM - The Courage to Disrupt: Leadership Lessons from Benefits Trailblazers

• Learn from bold employers who have challenged the status quo, navigating resistance and complexity to redesign benefits strategies that better serve their workforce.
• Identify the practical tactics to disrupt traditional models while staying aligned with fiduciary responsibility and long-term value.
• Understand how to leverage influence, data, and partnerships to drive meaningful change, demand accountability, and build more transparent, high-performing benefit strategies.