Improving health and well-being

Unilever's work on improving health & well-being supports

8 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Select one of the goals to find out how we're taking action in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Find out how we’re realising the business opportunity from the SDGs

Partnerships For The Goals

The social and environmental change required to meet the SDGs cannot be addressed by one business acting alone. Zero hunger, zero poverty, climate action, eradicating modern slavery – these are transformational goals, and they require transformational change, brought about by a concerted effort. Business, governments and civil society all have a role to play.

We’re involved in a wide range of partnerships, which often include new types of funding and new ways of working, whether with fellow companies or with other agencies. The Consumer Goods Forum’s sector-wide commitment to zero net deforestation by 2020, and the Unstereotype Alliance, a partnership with UN Women and other businesses aimed at eliminating gender stereotypes from advertising, are good examples of what’s possible.

Our global partnerships with NGOs and others address issues ranging from water and sanitation, to sustainable sourcing, to improving health and nutrition. Many harness the strength of our brands – such as the Vaseline® Healing Project, a partnership with NGO Direct Relief which aims to help heal the skin of 5 million people by 2020.

But we want to go much further – both in the impact of our partnerships, and in their alignment with the SDGs. A good example is TRANSFORM, our partnership with the UK government's DFID, which uses a public–private finance model to address persistent developmental challenges and aims to enable 100 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia to gain access to products and services that have been shown to improve health, livelihoods, the environment or wellbeing.

Explore how Unilever is taking action

More plant-based options

Sustainable Nutrition

Improving nutrition

Providing safe drinking water

Improving oral health

Scaling sanitation solutions for a better tomorrow

Building body confidence & self-esteem

Healthy handwashing habits for life

Ready to respond to disasters & emergencies

Reducing our environmental impact in Foods and Refreshment

Nutritious diets

Nutritious cooking

Responsibly delicious

Improving health & well-being

Grown for good

Our Big Goal Improving health and well-being for more than 1 billion

By 2020 we will help more than a billion people take action to improve their health and well-being.

Improving health & well-being

Our performance: Health & hygiene

By the end of 2019, we had reached over 1.3 billion people through our programmes on handwashing, safe drinking water, sanitation, oral health, self-esteem and skin-healing.

Over 1.3 billion 615m via on-ground programmes 710m via TV reach

Over 2010-2019 Lifebuoy's handwashing programmes reached 1.07 billion people

55 million people reached with safe drinking water; 114 billion litres since 2005

Over 28 million people gained improved access to a toilet over 2012-2019

102 million people reached with oral health programmes since 2010

Over 60 million young people received help via Dove self-esteem programmes over 2005-2019

Over 5 million people reached through our Vaseline healing project since 2015

Our performance: Nutrition

56% of our foods met the highest nutritional standards in 2019, based on globally recognised dietary guidelines

70% of our foods met our 5g per day target for salt intake

-23% sugar across all our sweetened tea-based beverages reduced since 2010

93% of our packaged ice cream contained 250 calories or fewer per portion

Key:

Achieved

On-plan

Off-plan

% Of target achieved

Our approach

Lack of safe drinking water, and poor sanitation and hygiene, cause millions of preventable deaths each year – particularly among children. We achieved our target of helping more than a billion people to improve their health and hygiene in 2018 – two years early. This will help reduce the incidence of life-threatening diseases like diarrhoea, which is one of the main causes of deaths in children under five.

The way the world produces and consumes food today is unsustainable. Malnutrition is unacceptably high and at the same time more than 1 billion people are obese. By 2020, we will double the proportion of our portfolio that meets the Highest Nutritional Standards – reducing sugar, salt and fat – based on globally recognised dietary guidelines. This will help hundreds of millions of people to achieve a healthier diet. Our aim is to provide products that taste good, make people feel good and are a force for good.

Our approach encompasses health and hygiene and improving nutrition. We are uniquely placed to deliver change at scale as we are the only multinational consumer goods company with a portfolio across Beauty & Personal Care, Home Care, Foods and Refreshment. The business case is compelling – delivering our commitments is driving more growth, lower costs, less risk and more trust.

Our approach, which directly supports a number of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, focuses on:

Selling appealing products with health, hygiene and nutrition benefits
Encouraging people to take action on health, hygiene and nutrition through behaviour change programmes
Advocating to bring these issues higher up the national and international policy agenda
Working with partners dedicated to health, hygiene and nutrition, to broaden our impact.

^† Independently assured by PwC

^* Results are reported by UNICEF in accordance with its methodology and includes reach from direct and indirect initiatives over 2012-2019; and also includes Cleaner Toilets, Brighter Futures reach of over 70,000 children by the end of 2019.

^∞ The Domestos reach reported in our Annual Report and Accounts 2019 was under-reported and should say “Domestos has built on its partnership with UNICEF, which helped more than 28 million people (between 2012 and 2019) access better sanitation and hygiene”.