Healthy living

Healthy living is high on the agendas of governments across Europe. We believe that Alliance Boots has a role to play in helping to address concerns over unhealthy diets and rising levels of obesity. We want to use our expertise to help our customers and their customers make positive changes and live healthier lives.

Alphega Pharmacy

Alphega Pharmacy, our European network of independent pharmacies, successfully runs a series of thematic and preventive campaigns across Europe. For example, we recently worked closely with Lifescan (a Johnson & Johnson company) to develop a permanent, cross-European diabetes campaign designed to promote improved pre-diagnosis, preventative action and follow-up in helping patients and consumers with diabetes. The campaign has been rolled out in France, Italy, and Spain. In addition, the Alphega Pharmacy e-learning network continues to focus on pro-actively anticipating pharmacy needs and developing a range of practical educational modules on key issues such as smoking cessation (in partnership with Novartis).

“change one thing”

Through our “change one thing” campaign, which Boots has now run for three years in the UK, we provide help and support to Boots customers who wish to stop smoking, lose weight or get fit. The campaign principle is that by making small lifestyle changes one at a time, step by step, it is much easier for customers to build success in reaching their overall aims of looking great, feeling healthier and happier. Over the last year, “change one thing” focused on weight-loss and delivered a range of ways to help customers achieve their goals, including healthy-weight check machines, action plans created by experts and an online support network. The programme proved a good platform for our Boots pharmacy teams to positively communicate their healthcare expertise to customers.

Healthy eating

Our Health & Beauty business in the UK is committed to promoting healthy living which is underpinned by the adoption of strict nutrition criteria for our own brand lunchtime food, drink and snacking products. We also introduced the UK “Food Standards Agency” traffic light colour coding in May 2007. This helps customers put healthy eating into practice. For each product you can see the amount of calories, fat, saturated fat, salt and sugars in a serving, along with the traffic light colour code that indicates whether the levels are high (red), medium (amber) or low (green) and in line with Food Standards Agency guidance.

“We want to use our expertise to help our customers live healthier lives”