In this Issue

Make healthcare affordable — again.

That’s the mandate many Americans have for President-elect Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. In fact, as many as 76% identified health care as the leading policy issue they’d like to see addressed by the new administration and a Republican-controlled Congress, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute Consumer Survey conducted in September, though the economy (79%) and national security (76%) were leading concerns as well.

When a company has been around as long as Plymouth, Minn.-based Thrifty White Pharmacy — which traces its roots to the 1884 opening of White Drug in what was then the Dakota Territory — there is an expectation that to stick around, it has to adapt to changes in the industry to stay in business. But rather than be content following its competitors’ leads in an effort to simply keep the lights on, Thrifty White has been on the front lines of adapting early to the biggest changes impacting the pharmacy business.

The competitive landscape throughout the OTC arena has changed significantly over the past five years, with the Top 10 rankings shifting in the past year thanks to a slew of acquisitions and joint ventures. Bayer’s bolt-on acquisition of Merck’s Consumer Health business in 2014 helped solidify its spot as the second-largest OTC marketer. And GSK Consumer Healthcare claimed the No. 3 spot after forming a joint venture with Novartis Consumer Health.

There is a paradigm shift under way in the men’s grooming category, and electric shavers, as well as the retailers that sell them, are feeling the effects of this revolution.

(Click here to read the full Category Review.)

MCLEAN, Va. — The biggest launch in M&M’s brand history, M&M’s Caramel Chocolate Candies features a creamy, caramel center covered in milk chocolate, enclosed in a candy shell. Caramel is the fastest-growing flavor segment in food, growing 15% in 2015, according to Mars. Hank Izzo, VP of research and development of parent company Mars Chocolate, said the brand regularly plays around with size, shape, color and texture. But, caramel has been especially of interest to the company in recent years. “Caramel is extremely trendy,” he said.

As pharmacist-provided clinical services continue to expand, the role of the technician also is expanding. Immunization delivery is now an expected offering in most community pharmacies. To support the additional responsibilities of the technician, Drug Store News has partnered with VaxServe to develop a set of immunization resources specifically for pharmacy technicians.

As we ship this issue to the printer, it has been less than 24 hours since Drug Store News hosted its 18th annual Industry Issues Summit. What began almost two decades ago as a closed-door discussion between a handful of retail merchandising executives and a few vendors in a small hotel meeting room has since evolved to become one of the signature thought leadership and networking events on the industry calendar.

AARP’s Project Catalyst — an initiative aimed at sparking healthcare innovation focused on people ages 50 years and older — in a report from April projects that by 2020, 117 million Americans will need some sort of caregiving assistance. At that point, the size of the market for the 45 million unpaid and 5 million paid caregivers is estimated to reach $72 billion, with RAND estimating opportunity costs around caregivers to be $522 billion every year, based on income unpaid caregivers lose in time spent on eldercare.