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Consumers’ Favorite Brands for 2025 Look a Lot Like Pandemic Times: All About Hygiene, Safety, Personal Care, and Packages

Shades of the year 2020; it’s déjà vu all over again when it comes to consumers’ most trusted brands in 2025 featured in Morning Consult’s Most Reputable Brands report.                         Here’s the list of the top 25 most trusted brands across all consumer touch-points and industries for all adults, ages 18 and older. A quick calculation reveals that consumers most trust brands covering, Home keeping and hygiene – Dawn, Clorox, Lysol, Mr. Clean, Home Depot Self- and personal care – Dove, Oral-B, Kleenex, Colgate Health – BAND-AID, Tylenol Packages

 

Americans Hear More Frequently About GLP-1 Drugs Than About Menopause, Sleep, or Bird Flu

Yu In a sign of our health communications times, GLP-1s are a much more frequently health topic Americans hear about than autism and ADHD, cosmetic treatments like Botox, Bird flu, sleep issues, or menopause. The Pew Research Center polled 5,123 U.S. consumers in February and March 2025 to gauge peoples’ perspectives on health information and communications trends in America.                           In the study summary titled, From weight-loss drugs to raw milk, Americans hear more often about some health topics than others, the Pew Research team. The finding that

 

Consumers Are Keen to Invest in Health and Well-Being – But Show Them the Evidence

Consumers around the world feel more invested than ever in what makes people feel both well and prosperous, we learn in the NielsenIQ Global State of Health & Wellness 2025 survey report. But there’s a trust deficit that must be healed in order for a health consumer to invest in services and products that feed health and well-being. NIQ fielded the survey research online in January and February 2025 among nearly 19,000 adults living in 19 countries: Brazil, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Turkiye, UAE, United Kingdom, and

 

Marketing Women’s Health: How Organon’s Nexplanon Took a Page Out of Romance Novels

With women’s health and femtech investing in the spotlight in 2025, most of the focus has been on either women’s access to health care services (e.g., for abortion and prenatal/primary care) to start-ups focusing on fertility technology and benefits, along with growing awareness of the long-overlooked menopause market opportunity. Contraception? Not so visible. Of course, we welcomed the Opill to the over-the-counter medicines market last year with FDA approval of the switch to retail pharmacy and vending machine access.                     Now let me point you to a newfangled marketing campaign for

 

How Consumers’ Economic Sentiments Are Shaping Peoples’ Financial and Emotional Well-Being (Spoiler: Not So Good): Learning from CivicScience

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on 1 May 2025 in Anxiety, Banks and health, Beauty and health, Behavioral health, Business and health, Chronic care, Chronic disease, Connected health, Connectivity, Consumer electronics, Consumer experience, Consumer-directed health, Coronavirus, Corporate responsibility, COVID-19, CX, Demographics and health, Depression, Design and health, Diet and health, DTC health, Empathy, Environment and heatlh, Family, Financial health, Financial toxicity, Financial wellness, Food and health, Food as medicine, Food security, Grocery stores, Health and Beauty, Health and safety, Health and wealth, Health at home, Health care industry, Health care marketing, Health Consumers, Health costs, Health disparities, Health Economics, Health ecosystem, Health engagement, Health equity, Health finance, Health insurance, Health marketing, Health social networks, Healthcare access, Home economics, Home health, Hospital to home, Housing and health, Hygiene and health, Jobs and health, Loneliness, Love and health, media and health, Medical banking, Medical bills, Medical debt, Medical technology, Mental health, Money and health, Nutrition, Omnichannel healthcare, OTCs, Out of pocket costs, Patient engagement, Patient experience, Patient safety, Personal health finance, Pharmacy, Popular culture and health, Prescription drugs, Prevention, Prevention and wellness, Public health, Race and health, Retail health, Safety net and health, SDoH, Self-care, Shopping and health, Social determinants of health, Social health, Social isolation, Social media and health, Social networks and health, Social responsibility, Stress, Tariffs, Techquity, Transparency, Trust, User experience UX, Wellbeing

When it comes to health, the words “fiscal” and “physical” are morphing as peoples’ economic feelings (the “fiscal”) are shaping physical and emotional health, we find in U.S. consumer data presented by John Dick, Founder and CEO of CivicScience.                 The Consumer Technology Association convened a special session with John, who painted a portrait of the U.S. consumer at a point in time — late April 2025 — reminding us more than once during the hourlong session that, “Everything is constantly changing.” One certainty that we can be sure of, in the dismal-scientist way

 

What is a Consumer Health Company? Riffing Off of Deloitte’s Report on CHCs/A 2Q2025 Look at Self-Care Futures

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on 1 April 2025 in Aging, Aging and Technology, AI, AI and health, Artificial intelligence, Augmented intelligence, Baby Boomers and Health, Banks and health, Big Tech, Bio/life sciences, Bioethics, Boomers, Business and health, Chronic care, Chronic disease, Climate change, Connected health, Consumer electronics, Consumer experience, Consumer-directed health, Corporate responsibility, Corporate wellness, Data analytics and health, Demographics and health, Design and health, Diagnostics, Diet and health, Digital health, Digital therapeutics, Digital transformation, Environment and heatlh, ESG and health, FDA, Financial health, Financial wellness, Fitness, Food and health, Food as medicine, Future of health care, Global Health, Grocery stores, Health access, Health apps, Health at home, Health benefits, Health care industry, Health citizenship, Health Consumers, Health costs, Health ecosystem, Health engagement, Health insurance, Health marketing, Health media, Health Plans, Health policy, Health politics, Health privacy, Health Quality, Health regulation, Healthcare access, Healthcare DIY, Home care, Home economics, Home health, Hospital to home, medical home, Medical innovation, Medical technology, Misinformation and health, Mobile apps, Money and health, Nutrition, Omnichannel healthcare, OTCs, Out of pocket costs, Participatory health, Patient engagement, Patient experience, Personal health finance, Personalized medicine, Pharmacists, Pharmacy, Popular culture and health, Population health, Prescription drugs, Prevention and wellness, Primary care, Privacy and security, Public health, Remote health monitoring, Retail health, Self-care, Seniors and health, Shopping and health, Social health, Social responsibility, Sustainability, Techquity, Telehealth, Travel and health, Trust, Value based health, Virtual health, Wellbeing

The health care landscape in 2030 will feature an expanded consumer health industry that will become, “an established branch of the health ecosystem focused on promoting health, preventing, disease, treating symptoms and extending healthy longevity,” according to a report published by Deloitte in September 2024, Accelerating the future: The rise of a dynamic consumer health market. While this report hit the virtual bookshelf about six months ago, I am revisiting it on this first day of the second quarter of 2025 because of its salience in this moment of uncertainties across our professional and personal lives — particularly related to

 

Consumers Are Financially Stressed – What This Means for Health/Care in 2025

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on 7 March 2025 in Amazon, Anxiety, Baby Boomers and Health, Banks and health, Behavioral economics, Behavioral health, Boomers, Burnout, Business and health, Cardiovascular health, Caregivers, Children's health, Chronic disease, Connected health, Connectivity, Consumer electronics, Consumer experience, Consumer-directed health, Corporate responsibility, Dental care, Depression, Design and health, Determinants of health, Diabetes, Diet and health, DIY, DTC health, Empathy, Employee benefits, Employers, Financial health, Financial toxicity, Financial wellness, Food and health, Food as medicine, Food security, GLP-1s, Grocery stores, Health access, Health and Beauty, Health and wealth, Health apps, Health at home, Health benefits, Health care industry, Health care marketing, Health citizenship, Health Consumers, Health costs, Health disparities, Health Economics, Health ecosystem, Health engagement, Health equity, Health finance, Health insurance, Health marketing, Health media, Health Plans, Health policy, Health politics, Health regulation, Health social networks, Healthcare access, Heart disease, Heart health, High deductibles, Home care, Home economics, Home health, Homelessness, Hospital finance, Hospital to home, Hospitals, Housing and health, Internet and Health, Jobs and health, Loneliness, Love and health, Medicaid, Medical bills, Medical debt, Medicare, Medication adherence, Medicines, Mental health, Misinformation and health, Mobile apps, Mobile health, Money and health, Nutrition, Obesity, Oral care, OTCs, Out of pocket costs, Pain, Patient engagement, Patient experience, Peer-to-peer health, Personal health finance, Pharmaceutical, Pharmacists, Pharmacy, Popular culture and health, Prescription drugs, Prevention, Primary care, Public health, Retail health, Retirement and health, Rural health, Schools and health, SDoH, Self-care, Seniors and health, Shopping and health, Social determinants of health, Social health, Stress, Transparency, Trust, Vaccines, Value based health, Wellbeing

People define health across many life-flows: physical health, mental health, social health, appearance (“how I look impacts how I feel”) and, to be sure, financial well-being. In tracking this last health factor for U.S. consumers, several pollsters are painting a picture of financially-stressed Americans as President Trump tallies his first six weeks into the job. The top-line of the studies is that the percent of people in America feeling financially wobbly has increased since the fourth quarter of 2024. I’ll review these studies in this post, and discuss several potential impacts we should keep in mind for peoples’ health and

 

Some Bipartisan Concurrence on Health Care Issues in the U.S. – But Trust in Health Care Isn’t Bipartisan – KFF’s January 2025 Polls

Two polls from one poll source paint at once a bipartisan and bipolar picture of U.S. health citizens when it comes to health care issues versus health care institutions in America. The Kaiser Family Foundation has hit the 2025 health policy ground running in publishing the January 2025 Health Tracking Poll last week and a poll on health care trust and mis-information yesterday.                        First, the health tracking poll which finds some concurrence between Democrats and Republicans on several big issues facing Americans and various aspects of their health care. As

 

The New DTC Channel Is…A Vending Machine (From Advil to Plan B)

I’m off to Florence, Italy, soon, where about 10 years ago I happened upon a vending machine sited outside of a pharmacy just a few blocks from the Duomo — the Farmacia Della Condotta. And in that vending machine, accessible at all hours (especially overnight when the pharmacy was closed), were all manners of direct-to-consumer self-care goods….including condoms. What distinguished this from other vending machines that might have channeled condoms at the time was that those tended to be located in men’s rooms in, say, bars — not openly on a city street. You can see the Italian vending machine

 

The Most Trusted Brands of 2024 Tell Us A Lot About Health Consumers

From bandages to home hygiene, OTC pain meds and DIY home projects, Morning Consult’s look into the most-trusted brands of 2024 give us insights into health consumers. I’ve been tracking this study since before the public health crisis of the coronavirus, and it always offers us a practical snapshot of the U.S. consumer’s current ethos on trusted companies helping people risk-manage daily living — and of course, find joy and satisfaction as well. In the top 15, we find self-care for health and well-being in many brands and products: we can call out Band-Aid, Dove, Colgate, Kleenex, and Tylenol. For

 

The Self-Prescribing Consumer: DIY Comes to Prescriptions via GLP-1s, the OPill, and Dexcom’s CGM

Three major milestones marked March 2024 which compel us to note the growing role of patients-as-consumers — especially for self-prescribing medicines and medical devices. This wave of self-prescribed healthcare is characterized by three innovations: the Opill, GLP-1 receptor agonists, and Dexcom’s Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) system that’s now available without a prescription. Together, these products reflect a shift in health care empowerment toward patients as consumers with greater autonomy over their health care when the products and services are accessible, affordable, and designed with the end-user central to the value proposition and care flows. Let’s take a look at each

 

Pharmacy Plays a Growing Role in Consumers’ Health@Retail – J.D. Power’s 2023 Rankings

“Brick-and-mortar pharmacies forge meaningful connections with customers” through conversations between pharmacists and patients, “on a first-name basis.” This quote comes from Christopher Lis, managing director of global healthcare intelligence at J.D. Power who released the company’s annual 2023 U.S. Pharmacy Study today, the 15th year the research has been conducted.                           Each year, J.D. Power gauges U.S. consumers’ views on retail pharmacies in four channels: brick and mortar chain drug stores, brick and mortar mass merchandisers, brick and mortar supermarkets, and mail order. Across all four channels, the

 

GNC Offers “Free Healthcare” — Telehealth, Generic Meds, and Loyalty in the Retail Health Ecosystem

The retail health landscape continues to grow, now with GNC Health offering a new program featuring telehealth and  “curated set” of 40+ generic prescription drugs commonly used in urgent care settings.             The services are available to members of GNC’s new-and-improved loyalty program, GNC PRO Access, which is priced at a fixed fee of $39.99 for one year’s membership. This is available to consumers 18 years of age and older. “As a trusted brand in the health and wellness space, we are thrilled to expand our efforts in helping our customers Live Well by offering

 

There’s a New “O” in Medicine-Town – Welcome OPill to the Front of the Counter

You may not be able to get that ear-worm jingle that goes “O O O Ozempic” out of your musical mind, but I’m happy to tell you there’s a new “O” in town: the Opill. Welcome to the first OTC contraceptive for sale in the USA.                     I wrote about Perrigo’s Opill here in Health Populi in May 2023 as a “signpost on the road to retail health.” It’s official: “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Opill®, a progestin-only daily oral contraceptive, for over-the-counter (OTC) use for all ages.

 

Happy Amazon Prime Days, When You Can Get 25% Off a Year’s One Medical Membership

Now in Aisle E(commerce) – get your one-year membership to One Medical for $149. Today and tomorrow are Amazon Prime Days, 2023 style, when you can fetch bargains on lots of electronics (esp. deeply-discounted Amazon-branded devices), sporting goods, kitchen gear, pet supplies, and even groceries (saving with Amazon Fresh getting $20 off $100+ orders on Prime Day).                       And among a vast menu of health, medical, and well-being offerings from collagen to gym equipment and blood pressure monitors is that One Medical membership good for a year of services. “On-demand

 

Getting Health Care at a Retail Pharmacy vs a Retail Store: Consumers May Be Favoring the Pharmacist Versus the Retailer

Not all “retail health” sites are created equal, U.S. consumers seem to be saying in a new study from Wolters Kluwer Health, the company’s second Pharmacy Next: Consumer Care and Cost Trends survey. Specifically, consumers have begun to differentiate between health care delivered at a retail pharmacy versus care offered at a retail store — such as Target or Walmart (both named as sites that offer “health clinics in department stores” in the study press release). While 58% of Americans were likely to visit a local pharmacy as a “first step” when faced with a non-emergency medical situation and 79%

 

Three More Signposts on the Road to Retail Health – Weight Loss Drugs, OTC Birth Control and Fashion-Meets-the-Flu

We continue to track to evolving, expanding landscape of retail health — which we see as the expanding ecosystem of health/care accessible to people-as-health consumers. This week, three intriguing examples are resonating with us: The ever-evolving weight-loss industry FDA favors OTC use for Perrigo’s Opill daily oral contraceptive birth control pill The convergence of fashion and health — specifically, how an over-the-counter medicine converges with clothing that helps us feel better.                   Let’s start with weight-loss, as several aspects of health/care come together in the consumer’s retail health sandbox. Dr. Eric Topol

 

A Public Health Wake-Up Call: Reading Between the Lines in IQVIA’s 2023 Use of Medicines Report

Reviewing the annual 2023 report from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science discussing The Use of Medicines in the U.S. is always a detailed, deep, and insightful dive into the state of prescription drugs. It’s a volume speaking volumes on the current picture of prescribed meds, spending and revenues, health care utilization trends, and a forecast looking out to 2027. In my read of this year’s review, I see a flashing light for U.S. health care: “Wake up, public health!” I’ve pulled out a few of the data points that speak to me about population health, prevention and early

 

Dollar General & CHPA Collaborate to Bolster Health Consumers’ Literacy and Access for OTC Pain Meds and Self-Care

Health is “made” where we live, work, play, pray, learn….and shop. I spend a lot of time these days in the growing health/care ecosystem where retail health is broadening to address social determinants and drivers of health – namely food, transportation, broadband access, education, environment, and financial wellness – all opportunities for self-care and health engagement. For many years, I have followed the activities of CHPA, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, and have participated in some of their conferences. Their recent announcement of a collaboration with Dollar General speaks to the growing role of self-care for all people.    

 

Dr. Santa Intends to Deliver Consumer Health-Tech for the 2022 Holidays

Even as consumers’ confess a tighter spending economy for 2022 holiday shopping, peoples’ intent to buy wearable tech for health and fitness and other wellness devices appear on gifting lists in the U.S., according to the 29th Annual Consumer Technology Holiday Purchase Patterns report from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).             In general, technology will be a top-selling category for 2022 holiday gift-giving, somewhat tempered by inflation and the increased cost of living that challenge household budgets in the fourth quarter of 2022. Tech spending will be down about 6% in 2022 according to CTA’s

 

Consumers’ and the White House’s Growing Focus on Food and Nutrition

Today, the White House is convening a Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. So it’s a propitious time to weave together some of the latest research and insights into food-as-medicine and a key determinant of health and well-being. This is the first White House conference focused on nutrition and food in over 50 years.               The National Strategy was released today, and covers a range of programs that bake health and nutrition into Federal policies going beyond “food” itself: we see various determinants of health embedded into the Strategy, such as supporting physical activity,

 

Gallup Reveals Americans’ Views on Industry Are the Lowest Since 2008 – Implications for Healthcare and Pharma

Americans’ positive views of 25 industries in the U.S. have declined in the past year. In their latest look into consumers’ views on business in America, Gallup found that peoples’ ratings on business fell to their lowest ratings overall since 2008.           Peoples’ highest ratings of industry in American occurred in 2017 when nearly 50% of people gave business a very or somewhat positive grade. The year-on-year decline from 2021 find oil and gas at the lowest level of positivity, advertising/PR, legal, the Federal government, and pharma at the bottom of the ratings.      

 

“Beyond the Bubble Bath,” Self-Care Must Be Rooted in Science To Build Trust Among Consumers

The goal of self-care for health-making is to improve lives by scaling health-and-wellness accessible to all, Bayer believes, giving people more control over their personal health. Self-care work-flows must be based in science to ensure products and services are trusted and deliver on their clinical promise, Bayer explains in Science-Led Self-Care: Principles for Best Practice, a paper published this week which the company intends to be a blueprint for the industry.                 Bayer recognizes that self-care is growing among health consumers around the world — albeit underpinned by peoples’ cultures, demographics, and “readiness”