All businesses have an impact on public health that’s evident in how their products and policies help—or hurt—the health and well-being of communities, consumers, employees, and the environment, according to a new book co-authored by John Quelch.
In Building a Culture of Health: A New Imperative for Business (Springer, 2016), Quelch—professor in health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School—and co-author Emily Boudreau discuss the “business imperative” of promoting a healthier society and improved living conditions worldwide. The authors provide guidelines for measuring a company’s population health footprint, and offer a roadmap to help companies optimize health-promoting actions.
In the preface to the book, Quelch writes, “A company that incorporates a culture of health in its mission and daily decision-making will not only seek to make its net impact on public health as positive as possible, but will also create business opportunities for itself in doing so.”
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