Nearly three-quarters of the world’s top companies have environmental strategies but a mere 9% have a global health strategy. That’s a problem, according to Ashish Jha, K.T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI).
In a commentary published March 25, 2019 in Fortune, Jha and co-author Peter Sands, HGHI senior research fellow and the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, wrote that businesses should think about the health impact of their activities and how they could improve the health of their communities.
“Good health is a powerful driver of productivity, while health-related risks, such as infectious disease outbreaks, can cause immense disruption to businesses,” they wrote.
Jha and Sands called for the global health community to learn from environmental advocates’ approach to engaging companies around issues such as climate change and pollution, “both challenging them and encouraging them to become part of the solution.”
Read the Fortune commentary: Most CEOs Don’t Have a Global Health Strategy. That Needs to Change
Learn more
Promoting health equity may be good for business (Harvard Chan School news)
Is good health good for business? (Harvard Chan School news)