HBW Insight Podcasts

The Global Self-Care Federation has updated its analysis of the health, social and economic value of self-care, using data from 155 countries.

Savings to health systems are up 21% to around $144bn a year, and for the first time the report looks in detail at self-care’s role in prevention.

GSCF director general Greg Perry and Ben Carrick, co-chair of the federation’s policy committee, join HBW Insight on the Over the Counter podcast to talk through the findings.

Carrick, who also works in global public and government affairs at Kenvue, worked on both editions of the study.

We discuss what has changed since 2022, why a single OTC pack in North America is worth around $362 in welfare gains, who should pay for self-care in poorer countries, and what GSCF wants governments, regulators and pharmacists to do next.

In this episode of Over the Counter, now also in video, HBW Insight talks to Rachmadi Joesoef, APSMI chair and CEO of Indonesian manufacturer PT Konimex, and Anama O'Reilly, who co-leads APSMI's public affairs and communications committee and heads public affairs for the ASEA zone at Opella, ahead of the association's joint congress with Self-CARER and GP Farmasi Indonesia in Bali. We cover why Indonesia is hosting, what Self-CARER has actually delivered on regulatory streamlining and digital health, why e-labelling deserves more attention than it gets, and the 5am fun run closing the summit.

Products like ibuprofen and loratadine are now grabbed off a pharmacy shelf without a second thought, but both started out as prescription-only medicines.

Everyone in consumer health is talking about GLP-1s. While this new generation of weight loss drugs is firmly on the prescription-only side, industry is now thinking about how it can meet users’ needs for products that address side effects and the nutritional gaps that come with rapid weight loss. In this episode of HBW Insight’s Over the Counter, ALL Creative founder Beverley Law and consultant Martina Gripp – who has 25 years’ experience in industry including at Boehringer Ingelheim and Perrigo – unpick what a companion products category actually requires. We talk claims and the grey area around referencing a prescription brand, the difference between a product marketed for GLP-1 users and one that ends up being used by them, what a real evidence investment looks like from bibliographic data through to a clinical trial, and what OTC companies should be doing right now.

A quick update for our listeners: HBW Insight now has its own dedicated podcast channel. To stay up to date on the latest, follow HBW Insight’s Over The Counter podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcast. You'll find the link in this episode's description.

For any podcast feedback or queries, you can now reach us at [email protected]

Consumers are turning to AI at the start of the self-care journey in growing numbers, but they do not yet trust it, the latest Better Health Report from Simon-Kucher & Partners shows.

They do trust pharmacists, who can convert that trust into sales, providing crucial sales volume growth for their consumer healthcare industry partners.

However, as Simon-Kucher’s Christian Danelund and Chris Rebholz explain in the latest episode of HBW Insight’s Over the Counter podcast – now also in video – pharmacists feels that support from industry has declined over recent years.

Health literacy is a phrase you hear a lot in consumer health at the moment, but it's not always clear what people mean by it, or what a company is actually supposed to do about it. In this episode of Over the Counter, HBW Insight talks to Trevor Gore, a trustee of the Self-Care Forum who spent more than two decades at Reckitt and now looks at healthcare through behavioural science. Gore's argument is that most companies treat health literacy as a readability job, making labels and leaflets easier to follow, when the harder work is changing what people do: helping them recognize symptoms, understand risk and act on it. We discuss the three levels of health literacy, the gap between what people intend to do and what they actually do, the line between educating and promoting, and why awareness on its own buys you almost nothing.

The science around the microbiome is moving fast, consumers are clearly interested, and yet the category still runs into some long-standing problems in the European Union, not least the inconsistent way the word “probiotic” itself is treated across the region.

In this episode of HBW Insight’s Over the Counter podcast, we talk to Rosanna Pecere, Executive Director of IPA Europe, the European office of the International Probiotics Association. Rosanna tells us about a socioeconomic assessment that the association has recently published, which tries to put a figure on what probiotics are actually worth to society.

According to the report, round €10bn could be potentially saved with probiotic use, which Pecere says is probably on the conservative side. We talk about where that value comes from, from digestive and respiratory health through to mental wellbeing, and why the regulatory gap in the EU is holding so much of it back.

Timestamps

2:30 – Introductions

4:00 – IPA Europe’s Socio Economic Impact Assessment

5:50 – Key Findings

8:20 – Why are probiotics so valuable?

10:00 – What is holding probiotics back?

11:00 – What would a different regulatory approach look like?

12:00 – Why should consumers care?

13:00 – What’s next?

Prevention has moved to the centre of UK health policy, with the NHS 10-year plan promising a decisive shift away from treatment. The financial case for getting there is less widely understood. In this episode of the Over the Counter Podcast, HBW Insight's David Ridley speaks to Liz Hampson, life sciences and health innovation advisory partner at Deloitte, about the firm's recent work on the socioeconomic value of prevention. Hampson explains why every pound invested in prevention returns an estimated £9.20, why early intervention pays off most, and how rising out-of-pocket spending risks creating a two-tier system. The conversation also covers the gender health gap in prevention, the underused role of community pharmacy, and Hampson's argument that health literacy is where consumer health companies can make the greatest difference.