Welcome to this week’s Four For Friday - topical stories focused on healthspan, systems change and AI for impact. Reporting from Atlanta today in the middle of a two-week US trip. Happy reading!
1. Milken’s new report on financing resilience
A silver lining of a crisis is often the innovation that comes out of it. And while the rest of us are getting broiled, flooded and infected by a collapsing environment, and dispossessed by dysfunctional democracies, there are at least some good ideas emerging that seek to support the resilience that we all need.
Milken Institute’s new report on financing resilience, together with Marsh insurance brokers, maps out a rapidly emerging landscape of innovative resilience vehicles. Financing is one of the four building blocks of resilience, along with the natural and built environments, and community networks (see below).
The report recommends five broad solutions, that weave innovative financing infrastructure into local, state policy playbooks and corporate strategies.
Community resilience plans, designed locally, with insurers at the table early.
Revolving loan funds recycle cheap capital into below-market resilience lending.
District bonds repaid via property assessments, de-risked by philanthropic credit.
A dedicated fund scales resilience tech at market-rate returns.
State playbooks clear policy barriers and share risk-exposure data.
The So What: The through-line here is that insurers move from claims payers to upstream capital partners.
2. Nature’s missing biodiversity metric
Climate investing has carbon: one number, universally agreed, portable across asset classes. Biodiversity has no such convenience, and we’re paying the price.
The IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) counts roughly $7.3 trillion a year in financial flows that damage nature against just $220 billion restoring it, a ratio of thirty-three to one. Blended finance dedicated to nature-based solutions runs at $1.5 billion to $3 billion annually, a rounding error in sustainable finance.
The problem is structural: biodiversity impacts are local while investment products are aggressively standardised, and few nature projects generate revenue beyond grants.
Note: if you’re interested in this type of topic, check out my new newsletter which focuses on the potential for hidden metrics that could change systems, Hero Metrics.
The So What: Without a single metric, nature finance stays small, local and grant-dependent.
3. Longevity - validated by your furry friend
Companion animals are becoming the fast lane for longevity medicine.
The Cat Health Company has just put its once-weekly oral pill (PURR-001) through a double-blind, multi-site European trial in 35 geriatric cats. Treated animals gained 7% body mass against 1% on placebo, with epaxial muscle (the one that runs along the spine) thickness up 23% versus 9%. No adverse events reported.
The addressable population is 41 million cats over ten across the US and EU, with no approved drug for age-related muscle loss. Kidney and cardiovascular targets are next.
The So What: Feline trials compress geroscience timelines from decades into months, with paying customers waiting. Look for human-pet crossovers soon.
4. The cheapest longevity drug nobody prescribes
Urinary tract infections look trivial until they are not. Over a million American adults died of UTI-related causes between 1999 and 2023, women twice as often as men, and hospitalised women over 85 are eight times likelier to die than those under 50.
According to this piece by longevity doc Peter Attia, vaginal estrogen, cheap and topical, cuts recurrence by a pooled 60% across every trial ever run. An observational study of nearly two million women found users aged 55 to 69 a quarter as likely to suffer sepsis (up to a third of sepsis cases are caused by a UTI) and a fifth as likely to die within eight years. Savings run to $4,888 per patient annually.
The So What: The biggest healthspan wins are often old, cheap drugs nobody bothers prescribing.
+ Inspiring drone show of the week: Remembering 9/11
Big day here in the US - 25th anniversary of 9/11, and this drone show: one drone for each life lost, was rare, emotional and expertly executed.
That’s all for now, happy, safe weekend, everyone.
- Stephen