We all know that fast food and 24/7 entertainment and the resulting sedentary lifestyles can lead to a suite of chronic illnesses. And caring for those illnesses creates a societal cost. But we rarely try to quantify that harm and especially not at the level of an individual company. So that’s what we did.

What if we could calculate the societal costs that result from the impact of commercial products on the health of their users? A new paper from our team at Building H demonstrates a methodology for doing just that. And for some companies, the numbers are gigantic.

“The ‘CVD patient’ is no longer a discrete clinical category but a statistical norm.” This characterization is one of the conclusions from a provocative new paper from Gaetano Santulli, a professor of medicine at City University of New York, who reviews the 2026 American Heart Association Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics Update and puts it in perspective.

Both WIRED magazine and the Wall Street Journal recently offered glimpses into trends expected to shape the future of homes. They’re interesting because they raise questions about how we will live, interact with technology and relate to the world around us. They also sketch visions that link these homes to our health.

When an emerging technology is so significant that it promises (threatens?) to transform societies, the way we live and even what it means to be human, it is no surprise that religious leaders will feel compelled to weigh in. Pope Leo XIV did just that last month, joining the dialogue on AI with the release of his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.

There are three options for dealing with the mismatch between our genomes and the modern world we’ve created: 1) marshal the resources of our vast health care system to treat all the resulting illness; 2) change the environment such that it doesn’t exploit our genetic misalignment by design; or, behind door number 3 – change the humans so that we are less vulnerable to the toxic environment we’ve created.

Building H arose from a simple perspective: that the modern world makes it hard for people to be healthy. Good health doesn’t naturally flow from going about our everyday business, so we have to be intentional, we have to work at it.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. went viral recently when he suggested that he was going to ask companies like Dunkin’ (nee Dunkin’ Donuts) and Starbucks for safety data proving that it’s “okay for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it.” When a Boston Globe reporter picked up the comment and ran a story on it, New Englanders rebelled. After all, Dunkin’ is, for better or for worse, a New England institution.

Remember when we thought all it would take to fix society’s problems was a little nudge, here and there? 

Want to boost recycling rates? Make the recycling bin bigger, and label the garbage one “LANDFILL.” Want to reduce obesity? Use smaller plates and put salads first in the buffet line.

We all know the statistics. The United States spends $5 trillion on health care each year - and 80% of it passes through private and government insurance into patient care, hospitals, and prescription drugs. This is the disease business, and it is a staggering monument to misplaced priorities and reactive inefficiencies.

Jarrett Walker describes the history and the reasons behind why we, in the US, have let transit survive – but never thrive – over the years and makes the case for why we should support it. From our perspective, looking at the environmental contexts that shape health, public transit is really important. The benefits include greater physical activity and less obesity, more social interaction, and access to groceries and needed health and social services for its riders, and less pollution for all.

Among the iconic phrases that best evoke the spirit of America - “Just Do It," “I’m Luvin’ It” - “Freedom of Choice” is surely up there.

In just three words, Freedom of Choice expresses the ideals of American liberty, where individuals are empowered to forge their own path. 

The idea dates back to the early years of the republic, when Alexis de Touqueville noted that American individualism was a new and powerful force that might rival the common good of democracy. But the phrase really took off in the consumer age, in the bountiful days after World War II.

The curse of the systems thinker is that one is always seeing patterns, always searching for the fundamental forces and dynamics that underlie a system and give rise to the peculiar results one sees. One is always – as we like to say in public health – looking upstream, for the root causes – and even their root causes. It’s hard to stay focused on the immediate problems at hand, when there are deeper, more fundamental causes of those problems that are – most perplexing to the systems thinker – so deeply embedded that they are rendered nearly invisible, or at least taken for granted. They are the givens, the fixed conditions that exist outside the solution space.