A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

In the wake of the always-creative ads for Super Bowl and last Sunday’s LIX bout, game-watchers got to see a plethora of commercials dedicated to the annual event’s major features: food and game-day eating.

Oh, and what’s turned out to be the most controversial commercial, the one on GLP-1s from Hims & Hers.

In that vein, and converging with many news and policy events, I’m trend-weaving the latest insights into that most consumer-facing of the social determinants of health: food, and in particular, health consumers viewing and adopting food as part of their health and well-being moves.

First, to the issue of GLP-1s, direct-to-consumer advertising, and the controversy of Hims & Hers’ ad broadcast during The Big Game.

The ad was titled “Sick of the System” and spent the first valuable seconds explaining the weight loss economy in America. Here’s a look at it if you didn’t see it in real-time.

After the news headlines on the state of obesity and high cost of prescription drugs, you’re shifted to a call-to-action to the lower-cost compounded GLP-1 products channeled through Hims & Hers — “the future of health care,” in the ad’s final words.

Here is a snippet of the voiceover…

Obesity leads to half a million deaths each year. Something is broken
It’s not our bodies. It’s the system
Welcome to weight loss in America
A $160 bn industry that feeds on our failure.
There are medications that work…
Priced for profits not patients
The system wasn’t built to help us
It was built to keep us sick, and stuck
But not anymore
Hims & Hers offers life-changing weight loss medications

This is the future of health care
Join us in the fight for a healthier America. 

EDO’s analysis of all of the ads placed the Hims & Hers’ commercial in fifth place for engagement after the top 4 commercials: first, T-Mobile Wireless “You’re Connected,” followed by RAM “Drive Your Own Story,” Liquid Death “It’s Safe for Work,” and, Universal Pictures “How to Train Your Dragon” promotion for the upcoming live-action movie.

Another interesting analysis of the Hims & Hers ad comes from iSpot, concurring with EDO that the commercial generated relatively high engagement as well as strong purchase intent (which is, after all, the goal of any ad). 

This word bubble from the ad tells us ad-watchers “got” the major themes of the ad and remembered them. The iSpot team explained,

“Despite a sixty-second length, ‘Sick of the System’ ranked in the 98th percentile of ads in grabbing Attention and conveying Change. Its 97th percentile rank in information delivery reflects the striking statistics shared in the ad—not just the 74% overweight rate in America, but also its sharp critique of the $160 billion weight loss industry. This creative tackled a controversial topic in a way that was both relevant and non-polarizing.”

Immediately following the broadcast of the Hims & Hers commercial, Novo Nordisk had placed an ad to represent pharma industry backlash – asking, “Do you really know what you’re injecting into your body?” (that is, when you use a compounded drug).

Furthermore, the ad also provoked two senators, a Democrat (Dick Durbin, D-IL) and Republican (Roger  Marshall, MD, R-KS), to write the FDA a letter expressing the legislators’ concerns about the lack of safety information in the ad — threatening potential enforcement action.

Another fair critique beyond the symmetric treatment of safety language in a prescription drug ad was about Hims & Hers’ use of body/fat-shaming in its ad, discussed here in Forbes, asking,

“Is this ad actively shaming its own models? Are we being told ‘you should feel good in your own body’ or told that we should not, that we need to use injections to lose weight rather than, you know, eat right and exercise?” 

Notwithstanding the controversy stirred up by the Hims & Hers commercial (which EDO termed a “Big Game Debut”), clearly, health and well-being ads landed pretty well at the Big Game, and their presence among commercials for cars, beers, and food held up against these traditional ad categories in terms of engagement. Ads from Pfizer (for cancer and innovation awareness), Bayer (for heart health), and my personal favorite, Novartis for women’s health and promoting the call-to-action for breast cancer screening, added info-tainment to the ad watching — see #YourAttentionPlease to track this wonderful health education/literacy promotion for public health.

On the topic of weight loss and consumer engagement in self-care and health at home, we applaud the launch of Tufts’ Food Is Medicine Institute’s National Network of Excellence in collaboration with Kaiser Permanente and other partners (shown in the graphic here).

Tufts University Food as Medicine National Network of Excellence’s goal is for “The NOE (to) bring(s) together health care payers and integrated health systems that lead the nation in efforts to implement, evaluate, and integrate food-based nutritional interventions.”

“Emerging research suggests that food-based policies and programs—such as medically tailored meals, produce prescriptions, and nutrition education—can significantly reduce diet-related medical conditions and associated healthcare costs. Food is Medicine strategies also help provide adults and families with children access to nutritious meals regardless of their location or income level,” the project’s press release details. Tufts’ director of the Food is Medicine Institute, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, added, “Each year, suboptimal diets and food insecurity cause more than 500,000 deaths and cost the U.S. economy $1.1 trillion in health care and lost productivity. By working together, we can scale evidence-based nutritional interventions that are driving change, improving health, and reducing disparities.”

CNBC called out the food-as-medicine market saying that, “(FAM) startups hope Kennedy, if confirmed as HHS secretary, will boost their business.”

“Kennedy has said he would make nutritious food, rather than drugs, central to combating chronic disease, and the companies hope he would expand Medicaid coverage for their nutrition-based services,” Bertha Coombs wrote in the CNBC coverage.

Kennedy is a strong advocate for cleaning up the U.S. food supply and ridding the culture of unhealthy food (well knowing President Trump’s predilection for certain fast food options, discussed in this Palm Beach Post newspaper article noting, “Trump is fond of fast-food. Any fast food: burgers, fried chicken, pizza …. “).

As the Tufts-Kaiser program exemplifies, food-as-medicine has already been advancing in the U.S. in the past few years: funding for FAM deals grew 175% in 2024 totaling over $2 billion over 4 years, based on Rock Health’s tracking data.

At the same time, and related to the hims & hers scenario discussed above, Kennedy has been vocal about his dislike of DTC ads for pharmaceuticals. “Kennedy pledged while running for president that he would issue an executive order kicking pharmaceutical commercials off television, arguing that Americans take too many prescription medicines and suggesting that the industry’s spending was influencing news coverage of the drug industry,” the Wall Street Journal explained.

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  “Consumer-directed health care” had a definition that was built on health-insured patients having “more skin in the game” — the theory of which was if you shift financial risk onto patients-as-payers, plan members would act like Rational Economic Men and Women and shop around for well-priced, high-quality services.

That theory assumed American health consumers would have access to something like a Consumer Reports for health care, and that health care services were largely shoppable.

While I’m a long-time advocate of people taking on consumer-style habits for health and well-being, as a health economist and long-time analyst of and advisor to the ecosystem of stakeholders, I’ve always been a realist about the shortcomings of assuming health care consumerism was a unified field theory for all health citizens in the U.S.

Today, we have a different phenomenon of consumer-directed health care, of which the Hims & Hers channeling of compounded GLP-1 medicines is a signal.

Consumer-directed health care in a retail health context is a growing force as patients face high deductibles, denials of care, lack of access, now demanding convenience and retail-style omni-channel on-ramps for care, products, support, and I daresay, respect and empathy.

Here’s a data point that is noteworthy, illustrated in the graph: Hims & Hers stock traded very well following the Big Game compared with Novo Nordisk, Motley Fool observed the day after the Super Bowl.

The stock market is not an indication of quality or access or moving toward the Quintuple Aim in health care. But what this does illustrate is a growing demand side for consumer-style access for health care, convenience, and access.

The supply side is responding in kind. To make this work well to the benefit of health citizens’ individual and public health, consumers will need assurances of safety, quality, effectiveness, and the kinds of consumer protections that come from public policymakers and professional associations.