Businesses and health

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{***Noah***}

Coming up on Harvard Chan: This Week in Health…Businesses and health.

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(The premise is that every business right now, whether they know it or not, is involved in health. They’re involved in the health of their employees; they’re involved in the health of their customers through the products or services that they sell; through the key communities in which they’re located or care most about; and through the health of the environment.)

In this week’s episode: How Harvard researchers are trying to change how companies think about their impact on their communities, their customers, and our planet.

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{***Noah***}

Hello and welcome to Harvard Chan: This Week in Health, it’s Thursday, July 12, 2018. I’m Noah Leavitt.

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And I’m Amie Montemurro.

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We’re bringing you an extended episode this week so we can share two conversations on an important topic: the connections between business and health.

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Every company has an impact on health—both positive and negative—whether they realize it or not.

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That’s why Harvard Chan School recently partnered with Harvard Business School to launch a new initiative called Culture of Health (COH): A Business Leadership Imperative. The goals: encourage business leaders to prioritize the protection and promotion of health and wellbeing and understand how some companies are already contributing to health—and how to encourage others to do so.

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The three-year grant is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and will bring together nearly two dozen faculty members from across both schools to conduct research, work with business leaders, and train companies and their employees.

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These researchers will lead a series of courses—both in-person and online-including a free Massive Open Online Course—or MOOC.

The courses focus on four key areas: employee health, consumer health, community health, and environmental health.

And you can learn more about the courses and register by visiting our website hsph.me/thisweekinhealth.

{***Amie***}

Over the next 40 minutes you’ll be hearing from three of the researchers spearheading this work.

Later in the episode, we’ll share our interview with Eileen McNeely, who is an instructor in the Department of Environmental Health and director of the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise—or SHINE.

She’ll speak about SHINE’s work to transform how companies think about sustainability—and the annual summit they’ll be hosting in October.

{***Noah***}

But first, my conversation with Howard Koh and John McDonough about the connections between businesses and health.

Koh is the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership and principal investigator of the Culture of Health program.

And McDonough is professor of public health practice and a co-principal investigator.

Just a note before we begin: Throughout these interviews you’ll hear specific companies mentioned. Those opinions represent each of the researchers’ personal views and do not reflect the beliefs of Harvard University. Any reference to a business, product, or service does not represent endorsement.

And now let’s jump into that conversation with Howard Koh and John McDonough.

I began by asking Koh to explain what a Culture of Health is, and why it’s an important framing for businesses.

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HOWARD KOH: So, till now, the responsibilities for promoting health and well-being in the country have fallen largely on the health sector and on health professionals alone. And because of that strategy, one outcome that we all see across the country is that we have the most expensive health care system in the world without the health outcomes to match. So, we need broader strategies. We need more innovative strategies. We need more sectors to get involved.

And this is where Culture of Health comes in. For business in particular, they have such potential clout and tremendous resources, financial and human, to shape conditions where people can be healthier. So, in this context, we view Culture of Health as a way of embedding the value of health into all ways of doing business. And we hope that’s going to make our country healthier.

JOHN MCDONOUGH: And then I would just add, so Dr. Koh was approached by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Robert Johnson, back in 2014 or so, made a national commitment as the major plank of their philanthropy to promoting a Culture of Health. And so, they have a wide expanse of projects and programs that they have been implementing over four to five years now to try and change the national conversation in the United States around trying to make the American public healthier and have better well-being, and broadly defined.

And so, Robert Wood Johnson reached out to Dr. Koh and said, could you help us collaborate with the Harvard Business School and create an effort to try in particular in this broad Culture of Health universe to focus on and reach out to the business corporate community and figure out what makes them tick around this whole notion of the Culture of Health, and how might they be brought in more proactively? And so that’s what Dr. Koh, and Amy Edmondson, and others– all of the team; there’s about 15 faculty or 20–

HOWARD KOH: And John McDonough.

JOHN MCDONOUGH: –faculty, myself included, who have been working on this now for a couple of years.

NOAH LEAVITT: And so, for, I guess for either of you, I mean, Howard, you talked about the impact that businesses can have. Was there a key moment where you recognized the importance of focusing on a Culture of Health? I mean, maybe a key decision by a company– I mean, when did that become a real focus for you?

HOWARD KOH: Well, there are many examples. One that’s really prominent in my mind is in 2014, when CVS announced they would stop selling tobacco in their 9,000 retail pharmacies across the country. So here we are in the public health arena, trying to do our best with respect to tackling the tobacco challenge through cessation and prevention and counter advertising and other strategies. But when CVS made this announcement, they immediately said, we as a business concerned about health shouldn’t be selling products that cause dependence, disability, and death.

So, they unilaterally made that business decision. It’s been tremendous for their brand reputation. It’s helped people consider quitting smoking who are customers of CVS. And so that’s one dramatic example of business stepping up and being leaders in the cultural health arena.

JOHN MCDONOUGH: Yeah, but I would just add in another great example Howard’s story– your eureka moment in the early 1990s, when you’d been in clinical medicine oncology for years, doing incredible work. And then you just had this, I don’t know, Saint Paul on the road to Damascus moment, where you were struck by lightning. And you said, wait a minute– public health and prevention. Am I correct?

HOWARD KOH: Well, John knows me well. And I cited that example because in many ways, the tobacco challenge is what moved me beyond the clinical arena as a physician to enter public health as a profession. And so that’s why that particular example hit me so hard.

But it’s been really a pleasure to see the leadership of business, not just in that one area but in many other areas, as John and I and business school colleagues and others have gotten into this whole very important area.

NOAH LEAVITT: And I mean, I imagine one of the appeals must be that the marriage of public health and business is the potential for, like, really broad impact, right?

HOWARD KOH: Right. We want that cross-sector collaboration, because if we focus on just health professionals alone, we’re only going to get the same results we’ve always gotten. And if we expand into the so-called pillars of Culture of Health– our wonderful colleague, Professor John Quelch, has promoted four pillars– employee health, consumer health, environmental health, and community health– as a way of conceptualizing what a Culture of Health should be about. So, we’re exploring all those four pillars and trying to build partnerships with business and public health and cite best practice examples that could be models for other business leaders.

NOAH LEAVITT: And so, you talk about those four pillars as the center of this. So, can you give some examples of maybe those four pillars in action? I mean, what do we mean when we talk about health and well-being employees, consumers, communities, and the environment?

JOHN MCDONOUGH: We actually, on May 29, launched a HarvardX MOOC– Massive Open Online Course– on improving your business through a Culture of Health. So, it’s a nine-hour, nine-week program to walk anybody– in particular, we’re hoping to get business people to watch it and participate in it– to think about how they can be more proactively involved in health. But the premise is that every business right now, whether they know it or not, is involved in health.

They’re involved in the health of their employees. They’re involved in the health of their customers through the products or services that they sell, through the health of the key communities in which they’re located or care most about, and through the health of the environment. And every business has some adverse impacts, in some way or another, on all of those pillars, and also some positives– some that they’re aware of, some that they’re not.

And the Culture of Health approach says to the business, says, let’s look at and assess how you do on each of these four pillars. And they overlap. They’re not silos.

But let’s assess where you are. And then let’s think proactively about what are the things that you can do as a business to improve the impact you’re having on each of those four dimensions in terms of your business.

NOAH LEAVITT: And so, with these HarvardX courses– I think these end up being three separate ones. Is that correct?

JOHN MCDONOUGH: Well, no. We’re doing three executive education programs. One is this MOOC that is free, that anybody can sign up for now or into the future to go through these nine hours. We’ll also be doing two live, on-site executive-training programs in the spring and fall of 2019.

And that will be for business people who want to come here and work with faculty from School of Public Health and Business School and others to get their hands dirty to try to figure out, OK, I buy this notion. How can I actually do this inside my business? And the first one will be for individuals, and the second one we hope will be for teams from companies.

NOAH LEAVITT: And that leads well into my next question, because I wanted to ask, I mean, who in the business community are you trying to reach? Executives, mid-level managers? And then what do you hope that they’ll take away from these different courses?

JOHN MCDONOUGH: So, we’ll start with the takeaway. What we hope they’ll take away is that they come out of this program, and they go back to their workplace on Monday with a hard, ready-to-move-on plan for what they will prioritize in terms of beginning to engage with the whole notion of improving their business– and that also means their profitability– using a Culture of Health. So that’s the prime motive in terms of what we’re trying to achieve and the key learning objective.

NOAH LEAVITT: So, I mean, it really is designed to be very hands on. You leave with something you can take back to your office and put into action almost right away.

JOHN MCDONOUGH: As is true for all of our Executive Education programs. That’s what we really focus on. It’s very different than the regular degree students, who are getting knowledge that they hope they’ll put to use in a year or two years or three years or whatever. In Executive Education, the point is the audience are people who are practitioners in the field today. And so, we want to give them skills that they can use next day when they go back to their jobs.

NOAH LEAVITT: So, when Howard spoke about the example of CVS and tobacco, you talk about the benefits for their brand, a boost in sales. So, I mean, when we talk about a Culture of Health, what are some of the benefits for businesses? I mean, is this a case where investing in this could pay off financially for them down the line? What are the benefits there?

HOWARD KOH: We have to understand that right now, businesses worldwide are facing increasing expectations and even demands to focus on long-term social impact, as well as short-term profitability. And in fact, there was a very important Nielsen survey a couple of years ago of some 30,000 people across 60 countries, show that about 2/3 of respondents are willing to pay more for goods that are made by companies committed to sustainability. And sustainability means attending to the needs of today’s generation without sacrificing the needs of future generations.

And so, it was also very interesting that in the respondent’s, the millennials– younger adults– were even more inclined to be willing to pay more. So that expectation is out there. Also, Edelman and other groups have done global surveys for many years showing that trust in business and in business CEOs is declining.

And any business CEO should be concerned about that if they want viability for their long-term business strategies to survive. And so, in that context, businesses are getting more attention when they commit to social good. And there’s leadership within the business community that’s actually taking that theme on as well.

JOHN MCDONOUGH: This has been a journey for all of us, even though we’ve still got a long way to go. And we’ve learned a lot. And just one of the things that we discovered along the way, for example, is there’s an organization based in New York. It was started by– remember the late actor Paul Newman.

NOAH LEAVITT: Yes.

JOHN MCDONOUGH: And it was an organization called CECP, to try to instill a sense of public-spiritedness in the corporate community. That organization has continued. And they have a little program in there under it called the Strategic Investor Initiative, run by a really talented guy named Mark Tulay.

And they bring the big investment houses together. And four times a year they come together around the country. And they summon to these meetings the CEOs of major global corporations and put them on the spot in terms of what they are doing as a business to focus on the long term as opposed to just the short term, to focus on the environmental, sustainability, and governance issues, and the social issues. And they’re also now adding to the things that they are going to ask CEOs about the Culture of Health dimensions as well.

And I went down to Manhattan in late February for one of these meetings. And in the room, there were about 150 people. And they were from investment houses that collectively accounted for about $26 trillion in capital. And they had five CEOs who came, including the CEOs of Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Merck.

And it was the CEOs. It wasn’t their spokespeople. And they were standing there and explaining how they were focusing on the long term, how they were paying attention to things like the Culture of Health dimension.

So that’s just one example of a whole family that we’ve discovered in the course of doing our work and putting this MOOC together. And it’s quite compelling, what’s going on. And I don’t think the public– or even a large part of the business community– has a deep appreciation for the degree and the expansiveness of what’s happening.

HOWARD KOH: We have another example that we can share. And three years ago, Fortune magazine decided to put out an annual Change the World list and identify 50 companies every year that have committed to long-term social good as a way of doing business. And a minimum requirement is that each business has to have at least a billion dollars in revenue to qualify.

So, they list these top 50 every year. And they’re advised by experts from Harvard Business School. So, for Fortune magazine to put out that list and promote that theme is very important for public health.

NOAH LEAVITT: And I guess what are some of the common things, whether it’s the CEOs you’ve heard speak, the businesses on that list– I mean, what are some of the common themes, I guess some of the common actions they’re taking to adhere to some of those pillars of a Culture of Health? I mean, the companies that are doing it well right now, what are they doing? What are some of the common themes? What are some of the business practices that they’ve put in place?

JOHN MCDONOUGH: So, it really varies because the corporate community is so diverse, both industries, sectors, individual companies, the different context of different countries in which they’re in, although we’re really focusing on the United States. We use the example, or John Quelch uses the example in our first hour of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, which you really don’t think of as a health company. But on the other hand, you think about it, they have to be deeply concerned about the health of their customers on the ship, because if someone comes down with norovirus out in the middle of the ocean, they’ve got trouble.

Similarly, they have to worry about the health and well-being of their employees who are on the ship, who can also get sick. They’re also concerned about the well-being of the communities where the ships come in, in terms of all different kinds of dimensions and being contributors to improving those communities. And finally, they have a huge environmental footprint out there on the ocean– those ships.

So about 10 years ago, Royal Caribbean was known as one of the bad actors in the cruise industry. And they had some serious setbacks. And they decided that one of the ways they were going to improve was to make a major investment in all levels of improving them along all four dimensions of a Culture of Health. And so now they are somewhat of a standard-setter and role model for companies in that space.

And so, it’s an example, A, of how these four pillars are not– again, they’re not silos. They really do overlap and interrelate across the board all around. And also, that it’s embracing this is good business and good corporate strategy as well.

HOWARD KOH: Another great example is about 10 years ago; a group called the Consumer Goods Forum was created. This is a global group of CEOs. It involves over 400 major companies around the world that have committed to long-term social good as a way of doing business. And they have five strategic areas. Two of them involve health and wellness and environmental sustainability.

So, for example, some of those members are promoting healthier food and beverage products, reducing sugar and salt content, for example. CVS, who we mentioned before, is another member of that group. So, this is a CEO-led global organization that’s committing to a Culture of Health. So that’s very exciting for us.

NOAH LEAVITT: And you spoke a few minutes ago about this idea that consumers are willing to pay more for products from companies that are sustainable or having a social impact. So, from the consumer end or even employees in a large corporation, are there questions they could be asking, things they could be looking for to basically drive companies to pursue a Culture of Health or just see if they are pursuing a Culture of Health? How can consumers feel a little more empowered, I guess?

JOHN MCDONOUGH: I think one of the things it’s important for consumers and customers to understand is you’re yourself. You buy this company’s product, and you’re just out there in your home alone. And you feel like they have no interest in my experience. They have no interest in understanding. And if I’m mistreated, they don’t care.

And unfortunately, there are many, many examples where that’s absolutely true. And increasingly, though, the smarter companies are really focusing on paying attention to what their customers and consumers are telling them on all different kinds of dimensions. And in fact, some of our colleagues at the Business School have done some research. Increasingly, consumers hold companies accountable for taking positions on issues that have absolutely nothing to do with their actual products or services.

So, for example there, if you’re a company, and you put out an anti-gay message or something like that, or if you don’t respond in some way to what’s happening in the environment that’s of concern to consumers as people, as citizens, there very well may be a price to pay. And so, it’s a very different atmosphere and climate and set of cultural norms and expectations than we’ve seen in even just beyond 10 years ago.

HOWARD KOH: John alluded to the fact that increasingly, businesses are reporting outcomes on what’s called ESG indicators– Environment, Social, and Governments indicators. So that’s public reporting. It’s transparent.

And so, investors look at that, again, to see how that reflects long-term value for companies they’re interested in putting money into. So that’s another driver. People want to invest in companies that are going to be around for the long term and are contributing to the social good.

NOAH LEAVITT: You spoke earlier, John, about how this has kind of been a journey for you for the businesses involved. I think it’s still like you’re describing this work in progress as this grows. So, with that in mind, I mean, how do you convince businesses to buy into the concept of a Culture of Health?

JOHN MCDONOUGH: I think that you can’t really convince them. You can put out information, and evidence, and case studies, and stories, and surveys and let them draw their own conclusions about it. And in particular, they need to hear it from their peers. CEOs need to hear it from other CEOs.

So, I think as much as we think we’re hot stuff, a couple of professors from the Harvard School of Public Health ain’t going to turn the business world around. But we can provide some important evidence and some arguments and some different ways of seeing things. Marcel Proust said, the real act of discovery doesn’t come from discovering new lands. It comes from seeing familiar things with new eyes.

And that’s what we’re trying to make them do is to see the business climate and the corporate climate in a new way, looking at it through a different kind of lens. And that’s what the Culture of Health, I think, offers in a compelling way.

HOWARD KOH: And I think this is an area where the leadership theme is hugely important. And in fact, our grant from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is focused on business leadership. So, when business leaders step up and say, this is important to us, and we’re seeing a difference in terms of how we’re being perceived as leaders and CEOs, and our brands are improving in their reputation worldwide, that attracts the attention of other businesses and CEOs.

These business CEO-led organizations are relatively new, but they’re growing quickly, as John has alluded to. So, we see leadership from inside the business world. And we’re very happy to help promote that and facilitate that from the public health side.

NOAH LEAVITT: And so just a last question. Has doing this work changed at all how either of you view businesses and their links to health and well-being?

HOWARD KOH: Sure. I think we in public health have not thought about collaborating with other sectors very explicitly. And this is an era where we all talk about the social determinants of health. And we need new approaches to collaborate with other parts of society– with education, with transportation, with housing.

Business is using a group that we never consider in public health because their work is just unfamiliar to us. But in this era where we have this so-called shared value of doing good by doing well, this presents tremendous opportunities for us. So, I think John’s description is very accurate because this is a process of discovery.

Collaborating with the Business School has been a fascinating, exhilarating, and exploratory process, if I can say. But it’s shown many opportunities where we can all work together to improve the health of the country. So that’s very exciting.

JOHN MCDONOUGH: I think there’s a battle for the soul of corporate America that is going on. Going back to 1970, Milton Friedman, the famous conservative economist, wrote an article in The New York Times, where he said that the business of business is to make as much money as possible to benefit the shareholders and nothing else. Everything else is you’re on LSD or something. And it’s just not real.

And what we’re seeing now– and the Culture of Health is just one manifestation of it– is a broadened sense that it’s not about return to shareholders. It’s about return to stakeholders, of whom shareholders are one, and that a company that succeeds is a company that looks at their environmental, their social impact. They’re paying attention to the health and well-being of their customers and employees.

And that’s a winning strategy. But importantly, it’s a winning strategy for the business, and it’s a winning strategy for society. I heard at in New York at the Strategic Investor Initiative one CEO who said, listen, we didn’t get to be around for about 125 years by only focusing on the short term. It just doesn’t happen that way. We are focused on the long term and making a difference for the long term.

And then this is another compelling dimension. There are companies out there that do bad stuff– intentionally, unintentionally. As an effect of the products– the tobacco industry, the gambling industry– there’s a lot of social harm that is done through the corporation as the primary vehicle. And so, a lot of our intention is to try to move things in a better direction, not to fix everything, because society’s too complex, but to have more and more businesses who are pushing and pulling in a positive, constructive direction.

{***Noah***}

That was my conversation with Howard Koh and John McDonough about the Culture of Health program they’re leading.

{***Amie***}

Now to part two of our episode, and some related work being led by Eileen McNeely. As we mentioned at the top of the show, she is an instructor in the Department of Environmental Health and director of the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise—or SHINE.

{***Noah***}

SHINE wants companies to factor their impact on our health into all business decisions, and act in ways that will protect human health and the environment.

And they place an emphasis on data and measurement—which will be a key focus of their upcoming summit in October.

I began my conversation with McNeely by asking her to explain SHINE’s roots.

{***Eileen McNeely Interview***}

EILEEN MCNEELY: So, SHINE was initially conceived as being a partnership between academia and business so that we could bring the best of academic research into the field and actually work with business as an incubator lab to innovate and actually measure and help manage the future of sustainability. And that means more than just environmental sustainability. It means people and their health.

NOAH LEAVITT: And so, you just touched on it there, that sustainability– I think people often think just environment. But what you’re saying is it kind of goes beyond that. And so, what does it mean for a business to be sustainable?

EILEEN MCNEELY: So, in the strictest sense, sustainability is really making the world a better place for all of us to live, in particular future generations. So, we have to be really future-thinking in our everyday actions. And that’s a very conscious intent to be sustainable.

NOAH LEAVITT: And so, was there a key moment for you when, I guess, it clicked or realized the importance of sustainability in business?

EILEEN MCNEELY: Business has been on the bandwagon for sustainability for a while, and mostly because of the very eminent threat of climate change. And so, I think that there’s been metrics and interest in terms of environmental health. And from the public health perspective, we understand that certainly, the climate impacts our health. But if we really want to engage people in being more sustainable for the planet, we have to fill them up and help them flourish, first and foremost.

So that’s, for me, when I started looking at sustainability metrics. And they were all geared towards environmental indices. I was wondering where people was on the page.

NOAH LEAVITT: And so, has that been difficult at all to get businesses to, I guess, maybe expand their own internal definitions of sustainability?

EILEEN MCNEELY: I think that historically, health and people has been very, I would say, siloed within organizations. And that’s been mostly because the reason why business thinks about health is two reasons. One is because of regulatory laws and compliance around occupational health and safety. And the second is because of the costs of health care.

And employers are major funders for health benefits. And so, their interest in decreasing health care costs has been a major impetus. But it’s really been around those two roles, and not thinking more broadly about how business can be a force for good in improving the quality of people’s lives.

NOAH LEAVITT: And so, to expand that a little bit, can you give examples of businesses that have excelled in this area? And what are they doing maybe to separate themselves from other companies in a particular industry?

EILEEN MCNEELY: So, I can talk a lot about companies that we’re actually working in the field with. And I think a couple of ways that I’m thinking of Owens Corning and Kohler in particular trying to redefine health from strictly disease prevention and disability prevention to more broadly about well-being. And so, if you want to take care of a more broad definition of well-being, what does that mean?

So, we’ve been working on measuring well-being in a very comprehensive sense. It includes things like social connectedness and financial well-being. And so, they’ve really stepped up to, one, measuring it. But then, two, when the results come back, they say, wow, some of these areas of well-being are so impactful compared to just the physical disease that we’ve been so focused on in our wellness program. So, it’s really changed the way that they look at it.

And I think another example is Aetna. We just have been working with Aetna. We’ve received a five-year research grant to look at well-being and its drivers.

There’s lots of information from our physical health in terms of risk factors and what interventions seem to work. But on a broader definition of well-being, we don’t know. We’re really on the frontier. So, this really offers a wonderful opportunity to not only know what well-being means but what makes a change and what’s really impactful.

NOAH LEAVITT: I know the dean talks a lot about this idea of, like, thinking of health and well-being kind of in terms of flourishing and, like, opportunities for flourishing. So, has it been hard to get businesses to think more in that mindset? Or are they easily convinced once they see the data?

EILEEN MCNEELY: So, I think data is really important, because mostly on the people’s side, it’s been rather soft science. In other words, there’s been agreement that we need to take care of people. But just what does that mean? How do you measure it? What a business is really responsible for doing has been unclear.

But once you take a measurement, actually, you can do a number of things. You can actually see where you are, and set priorities, and actually set a path, just like you do for environment. And environment is a little bit more developed.

So now we know, OK, I can measure water. I can measure carbon. And now I can measure well-being in people, too. So, I think once you get a language, you can have that conversation. And you can make a difference.

NOAH LEAVITT: I guess the other side of that from the business side, I mean, I guess, how do you show companies that sustainability, but also investing in the well-being of people, can be beneficial to them? Because I’m guessing part of their perspective is, OK, this is good to invest in people. But what does it do for our bottom line? Do you have those conversations at all?

EILEEN MCNEELY: All the time.

[CHUCKLING]

You know, I think a perfect example is the work that we’re doing with Levi’s and Target in the supply chain and supply-chain factories, where a lot of the management about workers has ban in terms of compliance risk, human rights. And so, they really wanted to change the conversation. But to change the conversation, it had to be– to align it with the business case.

And so, we started to create a dashboard where business KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, were in line with personal or population well-being. And we started to then trend these things. And actually, you could see how people’s well-being influenced things like absenteeism, and turnover, and quality of production. So, it’s only in putting those things in line could you really see the business case and the value of caring about people.

NOAH LEAVITT: I mean, it seems so intuitive that people spend 40, 50, 60 hours of their week every week at work. So, I mean, the connection between business and health seems obvious. But I’m guessing, again, like, once you were able to draw those connections between absenteeism, et cetera, it probably, again, helps build a much stronger case.

EILEEN MCNEELY: So, you’re right. It’s so intuitive. You say, well, why weren’t people doing that before? And I think, one, people didn’t really know how to measure it. And, two, there’s been– at least here in the US– this conflict between what is businesses’ responsibility and what is individual responsibility and keeping those things apart.

What’s really changed, I think, in the EU is then there’s been a larger imperative– societal imperative– to improve quality of life. And once that target was set, it actually changed the mission for business to be a force for good. And now, besides things like absenteeism, and turnover, and job satisfaction, and engagement, businesses actually can see that their interests in employee well-being draws brand value. So, the ability to attract and retain talent, investor interests in socially responsible corporations– they get measured differently. They get invested differently.

NOAH LEAVITT: Do you think there’s anything to the fact that this is not, like, a top-down government regulation of you must do X, Y, and Z, and it seems to be a little more coming from the companies or this desire to maybe be more socially responsible, so that it’s kind of coming from within? Do you think that’s maybe a reason why this has been more effective for a company like a Levi’s or an Owens Corning, as you mentioned?

EILEEN MCNEELY: So, we certainly do work with more forward-thinking companies. And I wouldn’t say across the board that’s the case. I think that more and more it will be.

And I think it’s really changing the mindset from, as an example, in the supply chain, it was a compliance structure and audits. And so, it was a red, green, orange, or A, B, C, D, F. And it was just a grading. And once you get there, you stay there.

The idea of improving people’s lives is more like a continuous quality-improvement process. And so, I think that there’s no limit. The sky’s the limit, and so the possibilities are infinite. And that’s the way we’re already thinking about the environment. And we have to if we want to set ambitious goals to really survive the future.

NOAH LEAVITT: And you touched on investors are looking for more socially impactful companies. I think more customers are. So, what could customers do to drive companies to be more sustainable going forward?

EILEEN MCNEELY: I think the first step is to really insist that companies be more transparent. And so, you’ve got to know that if companies are measuring this, there’s a willingness to actually care about it. And then if they’re measuring it, to really share it with their stakeholders, their employees first and foremost, but if they’re really trying to make progress, then sharing it across the board with consumers, and investors, and community.

NOAH LEAVITT: And you touched on it a second ago, about this idea of taking action to address climate change. And, I mean, it seems to dovetail a lot with– I know Gina McCarthy talks a lot about being really solutions oriented. And so, I guess how important is that messaging of these actions are not just good for the health and well-being of your employees, for your customers, but also for the environment, I guess, as like how important is having a solutions-oriented approach?

EILEEN MCNEELY: It’s really important because it allows people to actually think concretely. It’s one thing to set high aims. But if there’s no tools to get there, then it’s an impossible goal.

And so, I think that there’s two things. One is that’s part of the academic partnership with business is creating the tools and methodologies, but also setting out a really, I think, long-term view. Things aren’t going to change in the quarterly report. This is a long-term prospect. And so, we just need to be ready for that and level set our expectations.

NOAH LEAVITT: And so, you spoke a lot about measurement and the importance of data. And so, I know this year’s summit focuses a lot not just on promoting well-being but measuring it. So, can you talk a little bit more about this year’s summit specifically and what the focus will be on when it comes to measuring? What kinds of programming will you have?

EILEEN MCNEELY: So, this year is– first of all, it’s at Google in Kendall Square. And that actually has set our sights a little bit on technology and what that means in our lives for well-being. So that’s actually the first frame, I would say.

So, we’ll be talking about the ways that technology has either handcuffed or enhanced our life. So that’s one aspect of well-being. But then we’ll actually be talking with these leader companies and what they’ve learned once they go in and measure well-being and what those outcomes and impact are.

NOAH LEAVITT: And are you finding that measurement is still a challenge for companies? I mean, is this still a bit of a work-in-progress area?

EILEEN MCNEELY: I think it depends. So, the first part of that answer is that once companies realize that there is a way to measure it, they’re more likely to step up. The second hurdle is like, wow, well, what if we find something that obligates us to tell everyone and to do something about it? And that’s something to come to grips with, because in fact why would you measure it if you weren’t going to do anything about it? So, I think that people really genuinely want to come on board with a company that’s willing to make progress in that area.

NOAH LEAVITT: It seems like the measurement is almost kind of a form of accountability.

EILEEN MCNEELY: I think that’s exactly it. And I can think of so many times in the past when I worked from the regulatory side of the house in occupational health and safety, and there was an avoidance of actually evaluating risk or assessing risk carefully because what if they found something? Now we know actually the risk of not finding. So, it just makes perfect sense.

I wanted to say one other thing about the summit this year is we have these really engaged companies that want to change the world. And so, we’ve done something different this year besides having a conversation at Google and making technology part of our conversation about well-being. The last day, we’re going to get together as a community and really talk about how to perform collective impact.

And so sometimes the lift seems too big because everyone’s doing it themselves. And there’s so many things that we can tackle if we work together as a community. So, this year, we’re going to try and align different sectors, different companies’ goals to focus on a common area of impact, and then to set a timeline so that they can work together between the intervening time of one summit and the next. And we’re really excited about that this year.

NOAH LEAVITT: Is one of the goals for people who attend the summit that you kind of leave with concrete plans that they can implement in their own businesses after the summit’s over?

EILEEN MCNEELY: That’s exactly it.

NOAH LEAVITT: What would be some examples of that, that you might hope to see, I guess, and your best case scenario?

EILEEN MCNEELY: So, some of those examples have already started to happen just a lot more informally. So, for example, when we started to devise methods for collecting data in supply-chain workers, it was started with Levi Strauss. And then Target found out about it, and Eileen Fisher. And we, last year, held a special conference on supply chain and measurement of well-being.

So, there’s natural synergies that happen. But we want to be much more intentional about it, and then to try and think about what kind of impact we can scale together, so just really doing what’s been happening on the side more intentionally and actually measuring the scaled impact.

{***Pause/Music***}

{***Noah***}

Thank you to Eileen McNeely, Howard Koh, and John McDonough for sharing their work on businesses and health.

{***Amie***}

If you’re interested in signing up for any of the Culture of Health courses we mentioned, or in registering for the SHINE Summit in October, visit our website, hsph.me/thisweekinhealth.

{***Noah***}

We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a special episode.
We’re collaborating with the podcast Review of Systems for a look at the future of America’s largest nutritional safety net program: SNAP.

We’ll examine how the political wrangling over the Farm Bill in Congress could impact the health of millions of Americans.

{***Amie***}

Until then, you can always find us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.