Health for Everyone, Everyone for Health – Meeting Dr. Max Pharmacy in Italy

“La salute per tutti, tutto per la salute.” 

That’s “Health for everyone, everyone for health.”

It took me to get to Italy to find my longtime mantra for work and life expressed by a European pharmacy chain, the Dr. Max Group.

I’m in Florence, Italy this week, celebrating my husband’s and my 40th wedding anniversary – feeling blessed and well in all forms, mind, body, and spirit.

So it’s a propitious moment to meet the Dr. Max pharmacy company, which is fast-growing in Italy beyond its roots in eastern Europe. Currently, the organization’s pharmacies span 18 countries.

And while I’m here in Florence, I found a Dr. Max pharmacy 3 km from where we are in the Oltrarno. The vibe of the pharmacy-retail store experience is a convergence of a U.S. consumer’s Ulta-meets-CVS pharmacy-meets-Capital One Cafe.

My timing is serendipitous becausethe company is implementing a program called Forever20 which is bringing health-and-longevity-on-wheels to health citizens throughout Italy. The effort runs from September 2 to October 6, 2026.

“The campaign aims to promote a healthy and active lifestyle through an ecosystem of initiatives dedicated to prevention , wellness , and exercise,” Dr. Max’s press release explains (in the English translation from Italian). “The project aims to maintain a high level of awareness on the topic of prevention, making it accessible to all, with the idea that this includes behaviors, check-ups, and monitoring activities that help identify the main risk factors early and promote more informed choices. The campaign focuses on holistic well-being, promoting paths to regaining balance and quality of life.”

The mobile health services address a range of conditions and prevention, including cardiovascular health (think ECG, Holter monitors, blood pressure), along with longevity and aging assessments, and exercise/activity promotion where consumers can participate in daily challenges via Health Walks. 

“Making prevention accessible means bringing it ever closer to people, in the places and moments of their everyday lives,” Dr. Max’s Chief Marketing & Customer Officer Francesco Ghibaudo, said about Forever20.

That sounds a lot like, “health happens where we live, work, play, pray, and learn,” the adage often used by U.S. public health advocates (like me).

As I’ve discussed in my books HealthConsuming and Health Citizenship, health care in our time is increasingly morphing into “retail health,” with health citizens taking on greater self-care and agency for their own health. So it is with Forever20 and Dr. Max’s overall mission: “By bringing informational activities and engagement opportunities to the local community, the chain underscores its commitment to making prevention increasingly accessible, moving it beyond traditional healthcare settings and integrating it into everyday life…Today, the pharmacy is much more than a place to find a product or receive a solution to an immediate health need. It is a local health facility that supports people in their daily self-care, becoming an increasingly important point of reference not only for health, but also for well-being and prevention. We believe that the future of the pharmacy is to be a place where citizens can find a listening ear, qualified advice, services, and concrete tools to take care of their health in an informed and continuous manner….capable of promoting healthy lifestyles and spreading a culture of prevention accessible to all.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  In pondering this post, I’m reminded of a prototypical quote from America’s early days, “Go West, Young Man.”

Well, I’ve looked (and traveled) eastward, and I’ve found a True North in the ethos of the Dr. Max group.

It is wonderful to see self-care and consumers’ health engagement for wellness and longevity growing around the world….individual health bolsters community health, and at scale public health globally. The messages of respect, partnership between pharmacist and health citizen, and education are universal, and the Dr. Max organization and the company’s staff exemplify this.

Stay tuned to Health Populi over the next few weeks as I share more health-findings and -learnings from Amsterdam, Brussels, and London….