Top-Selling Products:
• Whole Body Collagen
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Company Mission: “Our mission is to bring wellness to humanity through evidence based integrative medicine. We are visionaries for health — rooted in and united by science. We transform boundaries, break barriers, set new standards, disrupt the status quo. We believe in science-based nutrition and natural medicine, developing health products without compromise and advancing the way education and technology support wellness for all.”

Designs for Health (DFH) began as a nutritional services company in 1989, operating in over 20 locations across Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey by 1994. Initially, the company offered third-party products, but following concerns about quality, the company began sourcing raw materials directly from trusted vendors and collaborated with select contract manufacturers for encapsulation. The company transitioned to in-house manufacturing by 2005 and today is a leading brand in the healthcare practitioner (HCP) channel.

“The popularity of our products led us to close our clinics and focus exclusively on distributing our line of dietary supplements, paired with comprehensive education for healthcare practitioners,” said Jonathan Lizotte, chairman and founder.

Core to its growth, and a pillar of the company, DFH is focused on providing cutting edge products supported by science.

“Our origin story as a company comes from this uncompromising value,” said Lizotte. DFH developed its own brand when the Lizotte family worked as private practitioners and recognized that ingredient levels in some products didn’t always match what was claimed on the label.

“This was unacceptable to us then, and we all live by this today,” said Lizotte. “Each product is checked three times for quality (raw materials, blend, and finished goods) to ensure all of our products meet our strict quality specifications all of the time. We will never ship product that does not meet our specifications since this is the foundation of our trust with practitioners and patients. No compromises.”

Impact and Strategy

The company believes the best way to positively impact wellness is through a practitioner who can provide a qualified, personalized wellness protocol based on a patient’s history, lifestyle, and testing data. As such, the company continues to focus on its core sales strategy of practitioner-recommended, patient-preferred products. “Our passionate focus on better meeting the needs of our practitioners and patients has enabled us to continue to grow and deliver our mission of designing a well world in a changing environment,” said Amardeep Kahlon, CEO.

DFH distributes directly to HCPs and their patients through its Virtual Dispensary, offering financial benefits and access to a library of educational resources as well as its Spotlight functional medicine tests.

“These simple tests enable practitioners to quantitatively measure gut microbiome health, metabolic pathways, nutrient level status, and mitochondrial health to enable practitioners to give their patients truly personalized recommendations to improve their wellness,” said Kahlon. “Additionally, we maintain a strong partnership with Fullscript, providing HCPs with a convenient alternative for ordering our products through their platform.”

New and Noteworthy

DFH is launching several new products this fall, including Anaerostipes, which the company said is the first probiotic preclinically shown to directly promote butyrate production in the gut.

The company is also debuting Progenalen Pro Peptide, a triple-action dietary supplement designed to support metabolic health and healthy aging.

In tandem with these launches, DFH is redesigning its website to create “a more intentional and educational experience for both practitioners and consumers,” said Lizotte. “This new platform will make it easier to explore our offerings and understand the science behind them.”

Additionally, the company is introducing Truemed, a new payment solution that allows patients to use their HSA/FSA funds to purchase the company’s products with pre-tax dollars.

Growth in Functional Medicine

As more people are proactive about their health, DFH wants to ensure innovative, high-quality nutraceuticals are available through practitioner offices.

“We see continued growth in the implementation of functional medicine approaches and the adoption of scientifically backed, practitioner recommended nutraceuticals,” said Kahlon. “This is being driven by many factors including people: 1) wanting to be more proactive in their overall personal care; 2) concerns about the side effects and costs of sustained use of some Rx products that don’t address the root cause of the health concerns; and 3) scientific advancement in the development of new products and ability to measure the positive impact of personalized nutraceutical protocols.”

DFH said it’s working to strengthen the integration of functional medicine and nutraceuticals by focusing on three elements.

1. Practitioner focused product innovation: Developing high-quality nutraceuticals and evidence-informed protocols that emphasize root causes and biochemical individuality.

2. Education and practitioner support: Offering advanced clinical training, research summaries, and science backed patient protocols so functional medicine providers can stay current and have greater confidence in recommending products that will positively impact patient wellness.

3. Science and data integration: Partnering with functional wellness testing services that measure patient baselines, and improvement after personalized protocols have been implemented. This in turn can be used to provide analytics for demonstrating value to patients, employers, and payers.

“These three actions enable practitioners to deliver better and more measurable patient outcomes, which then fuels more patient case studies and clinical support to educate both practitioners and patient on the benefits of adopting functional medicine approaches,” said Kahlon.

For the Future

Overall, the company continues to encourage more practitioners to recommend its products more often. “By doing this we will deliver upon our mission to deliver a well world,” said Kahlon. “We will do this through our continued commitment to delivering the highest quality products backed by science and superior innovation and education. The combination of our innovative products and personalized practitioner care creates countless opportunities to improve wellness for people across the world.”

Lizotte added to that, saying: “We will keep discovering. We will keep connecting. We will keep fearlessly advocating to improve the quality of life for everyone through integrative medicine, so that one day, natural medicine and the science of nutrition stand at the forefront of the healthcare landscape. Here, holistic thinking comes first. Functional medicine becomes conventional medicine. Supplements and lifestyles converge. We design a new paradigm. We design a well world.”