Report Ranks Companies on How They Impact Consumer Health

Report Ranks Companies on How They Impact Consumer Health

With obesity and heart disease at epidemic levels, and loneliness a growing factor of American society, a public health research group—for which SHP’s Sara Singer is an advisor—demands more accountability from large U.S. companies that impact consumers’ health.
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A public health research group has ranked companies and their products by how they impact the health of their customers, finding that some of the most successful firms have some of the most negative impacts on the health of adults in the United States.

Building H, a nonprofit dedicated to re-engineering product design to improve health, released a health index on Monday which ranks and rates 76 consumer products, from the Culdesac real estate developer to the entertainment behemoth Netflix.

“These industries have a massive, if long overlooked, impact on human health that the new Building H Index seeks to quantify and document in the most comprehensive survey to date,” the research group said in a news release put out alongside the index.

Stanford Health Policy’s Sara Singer, PhD, a professor of health policy and an advisor to the nonprofit group, said the index represents a relatively new field of medicine that is measuring the direct impact that products and companies have on our health.

“To turn the tide toward healthy behaviors, we need methods for holding companies accountable for the health impacts of their products and services yet evaluating externalities from company products and services on consumer health are woefully underdeveloped,” Singer said. “That’s the gap Building H is beginning to address.”

Singer helped create the Building H ranking system with the goal of quantifying how certain products and services affect human health and then encouraging company leaders and product designers to use the index as a guide for improving their environments and products.

Companies have real choices when it comes to the product environment they create for consumers, and as consumers we could be asking companies to do more to prioritize our health or to help pay for the ill-health their products promote.
Sara Singer, PhD, MBA
Professor of Health Policy

 

The dramatic rise in chronic health conditions is due in part to the modernization of technology and the products and services now so readily available. We can watch what we'd like and order our favorite foods from the comfort of our couch. Forty-two percent of American adults are now obese, up from 30% in 2000. One-third of adults are not getting enough sleep and half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness—with some of the highest rates among young adults.

“The products and services we use in our daily lives have remarkable influence on behaviors that impact our health, yet we don’t ask companies to bear responsibility for encouraging us to stay inside, eat too much, sit too long, or sleep too little,” Singer said. “The Building H Index is a first step toward making the health costs of products transparent, letting people compare companies and consider how companies might promote healthier behavior.”

Rankings and Recommendations

McDonald’s scores poorly—57 out of 76—not just because of the nutritional quality of its food, but also because the company’s emphasis on drive-throughs exacerbates inactivity and social isolation. Subway made its way higher up the index because of somewhat fresher foods, though the researchers suggested it make those more prominent in its promotions, highlight substitutions and set default options of customizable meals to the healthiest options available. Building H recommends all the fast food companies reduce their emphasis on drive-thru service and consider neighborhood walkability when selecting new locations. They also encourage fast food companies to reduce late-night hours and discourage ordering caffeinated drinks in the evening.

Netflix comes in at the very bottom of the index because users typically sit for long hours watching its content, often snacking on unhealthy foods. Building H suggests the streaming service consider shifting away from encouraging binge-watching by eliminating the auto-playing of next episodes or making autoplay opt-in rather than opt-out. And to fight the nation’s loneliness epidemic, the researchers suggest Netflix promote Teleparty and other third-party services that allow, for example, a grandparent living alone to watch a movie with her grandchildren in another state.

Culdesac comes in at the top of the index. It stands to reason as the real estate developer builds communities that prioritize biking, walking and public transit over cars and parking.. The electric bike company Rad Power Bikes gets a high ranking too, because its products promote physical activity and a clean way of delivering goods and services. Yet Building H also encourages the company to offer information about nearby bike trails and opportunities for recreational rides.

“Companies have real choices when it comes to the product environment they create for consumers, and as consumers we could be asking companies to do more to prioritize our health or to help pay for the ill-health their products promote,” Singer said.

Alarming Trends

At the core of the Building H mission is to hold companies responsible for the health impacts of their products and services, just as they are held accountable for environmental impacts such as their carbon footprint and sustainability efforts.

“The new report reveals several alarming trends,” Building H said in its release, including how companies are using AI to make unhealthy behaviors easier, such as getting people to eat more fast food, watch more TV and avoid having to talk to other people.

“Human contact, especially, is treated as a ‘friction’ that should be eliminated in the service of efficiency, convenience, and greater consumption,” reads the news release by Building H, a project of the Public Health Institute, adding the index also found an alarming rise in “junk entertainment” that is precision-engineered to maximize screen time and minimize sleep and physical activity.