EP 67: Designing Health into Everyday Life | Steve Downs & Thomas Goetz

Is the everyday world making us sick? Can we hold companies responsible for the health consequences of their products and services? How do you design health into the operating systems of our civilization? Steve Downs is a co-founder at Building H, a project to build health into everyday life. Steve, his Building H co-founder Thomas Goetz, and other collaborators are growing a community of entrepreneurs, investors, designers, engineers and researchers who believe that we need to re-imagine everyday life—how we eat, sleep, get from place to place, socialize and entertain ourselves—to be healthy by design. In addition to community building, Building H and their collaborators are developing tools to help companies understand the impacts of their products and services on the health and well-being of their users. Steve is a lecturer at the d.school at Stanford University and an adjunct faculty member at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Prior to his role at Building H, he was the chief technology and strategy officer at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) where he focused on the practice of program strategy and on the alignment of the Foundation’s technology strategy and operations with its organizational directions. Recognizing that RWJF’s pursuit of its ambitious Culture of Health vision required an approach to strategy that is highly flexible and adaptive, he led a transformation of the Foundation’s approach to program strategy. Born in New Hampshire, Steve earned an SM in technology and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BS in physics and applied physics from Yale University. Thomas Goetz is a journalist, author and entrepreneur. He uses data, design, and stories to help people understand and navigate complicated issues in their lives. Thomas is the co-founder of Iodine, an award-winning website that helps people make sense of their health and medicines. In 2016, Iodine was acquired by GoodRx, America’s leading source for prescription drug savings, where he presently serves as chief of research. Thomas was previously the executive editor at WIRED, which he led to a dozen National Magazine Awards in as many years, and where he wrote dozens of cover stories on technology, science, and medicine. He began his career as a reporter at the Village Voice and the Wall Street Journal, and has written for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Bon Appetite. His writing has been repeatedly selected for the Best American Science Writing and Best Technology Writing anthologies. He served as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where he founded Flip the Clinic, an RWJ Signature Program working to transform the practitioner-patient encounter. His 2010 TED talk on visualizing medical data has been viewed more than half a million times. He holds an MPH from UC Berkeley and a MA in literature from UVA. Follow Steve on Twitter | LinkedIn Follow Thomas on Twitter | LinkedIn This episode is sponsored by: Fortune Brainstorm Design, to be held May 23-24 in Brooklyn is a curated experience for passionate and successful design and design-minded professionals. Join Fortune and be inspired by diverse examples of design excellence, explore how design thinking and practice can be challenged and advanced, meet and network with high-level peers, and leave with concrete ideas and partnerships to drive transformation within your organization. Listeners of Design Lab with Bon Ku can use code “designlab” for a 20% discount on registration!  For more information or to register go to FortuneBrainstormDesign.com. More episode sources & links Sign-up for Design Lab Podcast’s Newsletter Newsletter Archive Follow @DesignLabPod on Twitter Instagram and LinkedIn Follow @BonKu on Twitter and Instagram Check out the Health Design Lab Production by Robert Pugliese Cover Design by Eden Lew Theme song by Emmanuel Houston