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Search The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) took part in the INSEAD Business and Society Forum on Health at the ChangeNOW Summit on 31st January at Grand Palais, Paris. ChangeNOW is an event focused on tackling today’s most urgent social and environmental challenges, and served as a valuable opportunity to engage in discussions about adopting and scaling solutions in the health sector in a sustainable manner.
The Forum on Health kicked off with the keynote address by Paul Polman, Co-Founder and Chair, IMAGINE, who gave an overview of the global health sector, while emphasising the need to maintain a spirit of collaboration in working towards Sustainable Development Goal (SGD) 3 on health and wellbeing. While progress has been made on health and wellbeing over the last 30 years, he noted, huge challenges remain.
In the wake of these critical challenges, aligning business models to deliver food that is both sustainable and nutritional is key. With over 2 billion people overweight or obsess across the globe, collective cross-industry willpower remains essential to finding solutions that should not only be considered a moral obligation, but also drive economic benefits.
The CGF’s Health & Wellness Director, Sharon Bligh, and INSEAD’s Pierre Chandon took to the stage to present their insights on the role that businesses have to help improve health and how collaborating with food companies can improve the health of societies. Pierre began by giving the research perspective and took a deep dive into actions such as labelling and various forms of nudging, while emphasising the need to place experience and pleasure at the centre of eating in order to drive behavioural change.
Sharon went on to delve into the CGF’s collective action on positive change in health, sustainability, safety and transparency to drive impact at scale. She introduced the Health & Wellness initiative’s Collaboration for Healthier Lives (CHL) movement that aims to raise awareness on healthier lifestyles in communities across the globe and drive healthier baskets. She shared how this is done on the ground through in-store, in-restaurant and digital interventions by sharing insights on the On S’y Met CHL movement in France and case studies from the 8 other countries in which CHL is active (China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, the UK and the US). She underlined the importance of working with academics to understand the impact of CHL efforts and highlighted the need to have everyone around the table, in line with SDG 17 on partnerships, for that impact to be meaningful.
Sharon also gave an update on the Global Learning Mechanism, a platform for the latest health and wellness insights, research and case studies, being built by the CGF and to be launched in London on 16th June 2020 (Health & Wellness: Impact Through Collaboration event).
The Health Forum closed its morning session with a presentation on health in emerging markets by Benoit Claveranne, AXA International and New Markets and André Hoffmann, Hoffmann Institute Advisory Board.
To find out more about the CHL France On S’y Met movement in France, check out this Harvard Business Review article (in French) by Pierre Chandon.
