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

• Understand the perplexity of employers being expected to act in the best interest of their plan members, even though they lack access to the data needed to evaluate cost, quality, and outcomes.
• Explore how the shift in pharmacy benefit transparency can impact medical spend.
• Review the link between fiduciary responsibility and end-to-end visibility to enable informed purchasing, strengthens vendor accountability, and drives better health and 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: Moving from Passive Purchasers to Empowered Fiduciaries

• 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.