How to navigate the food system for healthy eating

Steve Downs is a co-founder at Building H, a nonprofit research group dedicated to changing the product environment so that it creates health, not disease. Building H measures the impacts of products, services, and companies on the health of consumers. Steve is the primary developer of the Building H Index, a tool that rates and ranks popular companies in the entertainment, food, housing and transportation industries on the impacts of their products and services on the health and well-being of their customers. Steve is adjunct faculty at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a lecturer at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (Stanford d.school).

Prior to his role at Building H, Steve 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. Steve also had a long programming career at RWJF, funding efforts to provide patients with better access to information and tools to manage their health; to support the field of public health informatics; and more.