On Friday 23 September, epidemiologist Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme, will give the keynote lecture "Health Equity in Times of a Pandemic". WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and German Federal Minister of Education and Research Bettina Stark-Watzinger will give a welcome address by video. Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt Reiner Haseloff will speak in person.

The assembly’s four expert sessions will look at social determinants of health, economic aspects relating to health, health systems research, as well as One Health, which examines the interconnectedness of human, animal, plant, and environmental health. Speakers include Leopoldina members Gabriele Stangl, who will examine the pandemic of the overweight ("Globesity") from the perspective of nutrition, psychologist Jürgen Margraf, who will discuss social determinants of mental health, and microbiologist Seyed Hasnain, who will talk about India’s experience dealing with the dual challenge posed to health by COVID-19 and tuberculosis.

Expert in veterinary medicine and microbiology and Leopoldina’s Acting Senator of the Section Global Health Lothar H. Wieler, as well as Leopoldina members Susanne Hartmann, biologist and infection immunologist, and virologist Thomas C. Mettenleiter have taken on the scientific coordination of the Annual Assembly, and are also among the speakers. Lothar Wieler will discuss the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic for global health in the Inaugural Address. Dr. Johanna Hanefeld, Head of the Centre for International Health Protection at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, will give a lecture on "International Health Protection and Health Equity" on the evening of Friday 23 September.