Past is Prologue as CVS Returns to Its “CVS Pharmacy” Roots – What it Means for Health Consumers and Retail Health (with a nod to Colruyt Group in Belgium)
Going back to its roots, CVS Health announced plans to open 20 “apothecary-style” pharmacies around the U.S., the first of which was sited in Chicago’s West End. The new brick-and-mortar stores will average 3,000 square feet, providing full-service pharmacies staffed by licensed pharmacists. “Pharmacists are among the most accessible and most trusted health care providers,” Len Shankman, EVP and President of Pharmacy and Consumer Wellness for CVS Health is quoted in the press release for the plans. This new footprint is meant to enable “pharmacy teams to continue to build relationships with patients
Why Clorox Talks about Hygiene at Home: Health, Wellbeing, and the Home as Health Hub
The COVID-19 pandemic was a watershed era for people re-assessing and re-imagining their homes as hubs for health, healthcare, and well-being (as well as learning, exercising, and baking sourdough bread). This graphic comes from my book, Health Citizenship: How a Virus Opened Hearts and Minds, written in the midst of the pandemic based on consumers’ newly adopted behaviors during the #workfromhome and #stayhome epoch. We experienced the digital transformation of people through life and home-based work and education, a growing sense of DIY for things we could do
When a Hotel Becomes Your Health Partner – Learning from Novotel and Accor
“Novotel Launches ‘Longevity Everyday.'” That’s the title of the global, France-based hotel chain’s press release, announcing the Novotel brand’s initiative to serve up healthy hospitality. Check out this video… Behind this strategic positioning decision, the hotel notes, “Accor data reveals that one in three travelers is taking daily steps to improve their mental and physical wellbeing, yet most longevity programs remain out of reach for many people. This gap between demand and accessibility has created a strategic opportunity that Novotel, Accor’s founding brand, is uniquely positioned to address.” This approach will extend to over 600 hotels operating in 67 countries
The New (Old) Long-Term Care: Intergenerational, Together at Home
One in three adult children in the U.S. say that moving their parent(s) into their family’s home is the most likely living arrangement for their folks as they age, we hear from a study on the “Care Conversation” from LevLane, conducted by Talker Research. That’s twice as many consumers as those looking to assisted living (19%) or senior living or memory care facilities (16%). Talker Research conducted a survey of 2,000 U.S. adults, Gen X or younger with a living parent, to assess the current state of and future prospects for the senior living market.
Sleep as a Pillar of Health at CES 2026 — What Can Happen When A Lamborghini Legacy Mashes Up With Sleep Tech
Well-being is a new form of luxury….and sleep is an inherent aspect of well-being and health, a message reinforced during a press conference hosted by the National Sleep Foundation at CES 2026. Sleep has been an ongoing theme at CES for many years: here’s a post I wrote on sleep at CES 2025 a year ago for some historical context. In today’s growing home-as-our-health-hub ethos, sleep-tech takes on a variety of forms, from new-fangled beds and sensors, smart rings, other wearable tech (like earbuds), and circadian rhythm lighting innovations. In yesterday’s Health Populi, I focused
Tech Trends to Watch at CES 2026 – For Health, It’s About Longer Living, Smarter Living, and Better Living
Live from CES 2026 in Las Vegas…the first day of CES Media Days preceding the big show always covers a context-setting report on Tech Trends to Watch. This is one of my annual go-to programs which helps orient media and industry analysts with a lens on CES’s key tech categories and some hard data on market size and growth expectations. While I’ll focus on the health/care specifics in the trend forecast, let me first update you on the overall technology market revenues for the U.S. which are estimated at $565 billion for 2026.
Exercise is Health Care, and Consumers Are Willing to Pay – Context for #CES2026
“Americans are not just setting fitness goals; they are budgeting for them,” Liz Clark, President and CEO of the Health & Fitness Association observed. “People increasingly see exercise as an essential investment in their long-term health. Even in a challenging economic environment, Americans are prioritizing physical activity as a proactive form of preventive healthcare.” Americans see exercise as healthcare — and health — according to a survey from the Health & Fitness Association (HFA). HFA commissioned Kantar to conduct the online survey among 2,000 U.S. adults 18 and over in December 2025 — well-timed for the
A Primer on Health Consumers for CES 2026 – How Macro Consumer Trends Will Shape Healthcare Consumers in 2026
Increasingly, people are engaging more in health care decision making due to many factors impacting their personal medical choices — from the cost and access to health insurance to co-payments for prescription drugs and the supply of primary care doctors, more patients developed and exercised their health consumer muscles in 2025, For 2026, the health consumer muscle-building will grow as people will be re-shaped by macro market factors we are currently gleaning from forecasts looking into the new year: for personal finances, social issues, technology adoption, views on AI and privacy, and other issues. Here are some data points to
How Consumers’ Access to Telehealth Impacts Medical Real Estate and Design Decisions
The idea of “hospitality” in health care is not new, but the nature of how patients-as-consumers are dealing with health care choices based on what looks and feels good is changing the nature of what hospitality means in technology-enabled health care delivery, we learn from the 2025 Patient Consumer Survey conducted by JLL. Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. (JLL) is one of the largest global commercial real estate firms with a strong portfolio of medical buildings. So it is worthwhile to track what the company is learning about health care delivery distributed both inside and outside of brick-and-mortar medical buildings.
Dr. Osterholm Explains “The Big One” – A Deja Vu Moment with a True North Public Health Expert
“The truism that no one is completely safe until everyone is safe is a truism because it happens to be true.” So caution Michael Osterholm, epidemiologist, professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and director of CIDRAP (the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the U-MN) and collaborating writer Mark Olshaker in their new book, The Big One. (In this post, for the sake of brevity, I’ll refer to the two authors as “O&O”). Simply put, the tagline tells us what we are about to read: a
From Bowling Alone to Eating Alone – What the Shift to Take-Out Food Means for Our Social Well-Being and Mental Health
New data from the American Time Use Survey, research conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows that Americans now favor eating in-home compared with eating out at restaurants. Corroborating this shift is other data from the National Restaurant Association sharing that 74% of all restaurant traffic in 2023 came from “off premises” customers — that is, from takeout and delivery — up from 61% in the pre-COVID era. What does this mean for our health, well-being, and sense of community and connectivity? I’m preparing a new talk to
Improve Sleep, Improve the World and Health: ResMed’s Look at Global Sleep Trends
The world would be a better place if we had more, and better quality sleep. That’s the hopeful conclusion from the fifth annual Global Sleep Survey from ResMed. ResMed’s global reach with the sleeping public enabled the company to access the perspectives of over 30,000 respondents in 13 markets, finding that one in 3 people have trouble falling or staying asleep 3 or more times a week. We now live in “a world struggling with poor sleep” — “a world without rest,” ResMed coins our sleepless situation. The irony is that most people believe
Health Consumer Check-In: From Digital Detox to Analog Wellness, Social Re-Wilding, and a Return to the Bookstore
As humans have undergone personal digital transformations, living omni-channel and appreciating the conveniences that being switched-on can bring, there’s a growing demand for “analog wellness.” That’s one of ten trends covered in the Global Wellness Institute’s (GWI) report on 2025 Wellness Trends, and one I want to dig into early this year as consumers are facing growing challenges to our privacy, social bullying, and workforce stressors compelling many employees to spend too many hours in digital isolation and loneliness. To paint the larger landscape of and drivers underpinning analog wellness, I will weave several important reports and studies together, all
Connecting for Health at Home: A Unified Field Theory from #CES2025 (On Samsung, Withings, and Panasonic)
There were over 4,500 exhibitors on the show floor of the 2025 CES in Las Vegas last week, addressing every imaginable aspect of consumers’ daily lives as we increasingly coexist with technology to support life, liberty, and our personal pursuits of happiness….. ….and health. My focus is always on health, and in the past decade and a half, health/care, everywhere. So my lens on #CES2025 looked out for specific point solutions for health, medical care, fitness and well-being, along with adjacencies for mobility/auto, environmental health (think: clean air, clean water), kitchen appliances and food-tech, and home care (not the medical
How Trauma-Informed Design Principles Can Be Health-Ful for All of Us – Learning from IKEA
As a long-time fan and customer of IKEA, I receive daily Google Alerts about the company, from business finances to design trends. When I read this piece on IKEA’s work on a home designed for people who were homeless, I paid special attention to learn about the concept of trauma-informed design. Thanks to the publication Retail TouchPoints and the author of the story, Adan Blair, for covering this project. The story has lit a lot of lightbulb inspirations for me in thinking through the role housing plays in human health and well-being, and also to
I'm grateful to be part of the Duke Corporate Education faculty, sharing perspectives on the future of health care with health and life science companies. Once again, I'll be brainstorming the future of health care with a cohort of executives working in a global pharmaceutical company.