Businesses have a large impact on global health and well-being. A business’s own operations and supply chain can have direct negative impacts on health including through local pollution, disposal of hazardous waste, and health and safety standards on the work floor. The use of chemicals in the workplace can negatively impact workers’ health and make work particularly hazardous for children. According to the ILO, more than 2.3 million people die every year as a result of occupational accidents or work-related diseases in addition to 317 million on-the-job accidents. Annual worker related deaths in agricultural supply chains alone are reported at 170,000. Six per cent of all cancers are caused by occupational exposure to carcinogens. Business products and services can also impact on health: negatively as, for example, in the case of unhealthy foods, addictive substances, and defective products; and positively, for example through the development and provision of affordable medication and medical devices. Regardless of its industry or sector, business should recognize health in all its forms as a human right as defined by the World Health Organization, and it should to act accordingly. Business should also recognize the right to safe and healthy working conditions as set out in the International Covenant on Economic & Social Rights, taking steps to understand, monitor, and minimise negative health impacts throughout their end-to-end operations. As universal health coverage is often a public policy priority, businesses should ensure that their activities allow government to achieve its goals, including through responsible tax practices. Businesses that are directly involved in provision of health care and medication must ensure that their practices do not undermine access to healthcare and medicines for poor and vulnerable populations through inappropriate pricing, lobbying, intellectual property protection, or similar practices.

Leadership on Goal 3 can consist of building on core responsible business practices to understand, monitor, mitigate, and remediate negative impacts on health. Leading companies can leverage their expertise, resources, and knowledge, and their vital role in product, process, and business model innovation for the benefit of global health. Further, business, with the strength of its convening power, can take an active role in multi-stakeholder initiatives that encourage healthy behaviours and improve access to healthcare.

Leadership on Goal 3 can yield significant returns for businesses. Annual healthcare costs are currently $7 trillion and rising as the global population grows, a large share of the global population that was previously in relative poverty increases its income so that it can access quality healthcare, and diseases and unhealthy lifestyles are on the rise. Business can responsibly access and create new markets for their products associated with these trends, as well as change the way they do business at present, to advance Goal 3.

Goal 3 is deeply interconnected with other Goals. Improved health can, in turn, reduce poverty, increase educational attainment, create opportunities for finding decent work, and free up resources for boosting economic productivity and environmental protection. As such, health and wellbeing are at the heart of a virtuous cycle that contributes to delivery of the Global Goals. This also implies that a failure to deliver on Goal 3 hampers all other Goals, and vice versa. In the medium term, and without rapid progress on efficiency, the risk that improved health may lead to greater consumption and energy use in ways that will make all the other Goals harder to attain should be carefully managed.