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We reported previously how Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health public health and business professor John Quelch says businesses can continue to improve their bottom line while simultaneously strengthening their overall “public health footprint.”

Quelch defines this footprint as the way in which companies can positively or negatively affect not just employee health but also consumer, community, and environmental health through their products, services, and policies.

Quelch had co-chaired the conference, “Building a Culture of Health: A New Imperative for Business,” at Harvard Business School with Chan colleague Howard Koh, the former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The 300 attendees of the conference discussed methods for improving the public health footprint of businesses by incorporating health as a widespread corporate value.

Now Harvard amplifies the point with a post related to new Quelch's book.

Harvard writes: “In “Building a Culture of Health: A New Imperative for Business” (Springer, 2016), Quelch—professor in health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School—and co-author Emily Boudreau discuss the “business imperative” of promoting a healthier society and improved living conditions worldwide. The authors provide guidelines for measuring a company’s population health footprint, and offer a roadmap to help companies optimize health-promoting actions.”

“In the preface to the book, Quelch writes, ‘A company that incorporates a culture of health in its mission and daily decision-making will not only seek to make its net impact on public health as positive as possible, but will also create business opportunities for itself in doing so.'”

Indeed, the book description state: “This ambitious volume sets out to understand how every company impacts public health and introduces a robust model, rooted in organizational and scientific knowledge, for companies committed to making positive contributions to health and wellness. Focusing on four interconnected areas of corporate impact, it not only discusses the business imperative of promoting a healthier society and improved living conditions worldwide, but also provides guidelines for measuring a company’s population health footprint. Examples, statistics and visuals showcase emerging corporate involvement in public health and underscore the business opportunities available to companies that invest in health. The authors offer a detailed roadmap for optimizing health-promoting actions in a rapidly evolving business and social climate across” multiple core areas.