GLOBAL HEALTH TRENDS
The Wellness Opportunity
R
esponsibility for healthcare is increasingly being pushed onto the public. With public spending under pressure
and greater concern over the social and economic costs of both dealing with and not dealing with health, governments progressively nudge us to take better care of ourselves – creating challenges and opportunities to shape the global health and wellbeing landscape. Increased longevity has always been
seen as the ideal, but many are now beginning to question whether life expectancy should be the main focus of our assessment of the quality of life, which inevitably declines as the ageing process takes place. In addition,
with the cost of an extra year of life estimated to increase from US$100,000 to US$300,000 in the US by 2050, we will see growing debates over who has the right to decide whether treatment is viable. This issue is highly polarising, and we could see decisions about who receives healthcare shift from the healthcare providers to those patients who can afford to pay for it. In the meantime, WHO estimates that
388 million people will die worldwide from chronic disease over the next
10 years, at an unsustainable cost of approximately 3 per cent of global GDP. However, it also estimates that 36 million of these deaths could be averted through better lifestyle choices, with data
Tomi Isaacs gives an overview of the health and wellbeing landscape as captured by The Futures Company’s latest Global MONITOR studies
showing the two most common causes of death in the world to be lifestyle diseases – namely heart disease and stroke. The positive financial implications
of lowering the incidence of lifestyle disease by encouraging people to take responsibility for their health would be significant: if there were a modest 10 per cent reduction in mortality from heart disease and cancer, it could save US$10.4trn in the US alone on an annual basis – which, among other benefits, could potentially mean funding being directed to more cost-effective healthcare interventions for non- lifestyle related diseases.
Unlocking new markets The imperative to take care of ourselves is heightened when we consider that,
“COMPANIES THAT SUPPORT CONSUMERS IN NAVIGATING THE WELLBEING LANDSCAPE WILL UNLOCK NEW AREAS OF GROWTH FOR DECADES”
for the first time ever, diseases associated with obesity are a greater global health burden than those associated with lack of nutrition. Globally, over 40 million preschool
children were overweight or obese in 2008, and excess weight among the adult population is also significant: global sales of weight management-positioned food and beverages amounted to a staggering US$163bn in 2012, and we expect this to grow. However, this represents a big
opportunity for the health and fitness industry, with a huge proportion of the global population wanting to lose or manage their weight. Rather than allowing people to simply turn to diet for the solution, better education is required regarding the calories
Traditionally holistic Asian markets are adopting defensive health strategies
56 Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital November/December 2013 © Cybertrek 2013
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