Two weeks before the Food and Drug Administration met on expanding the switch paradigm, attendees of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association’s Annual Executive Conference discussed how over-the-counter medicines can help shape health care as part of a panel featuring Joe Magnacca, Walgreens president of daily living products and solutions.

Family Dollar is on a mission to increase traffic to its stores — of which it intends to build twice as many in fiscal 2012 as it did in fiscal 2011 — and grow its market basket. That has meant a growing emphasis on what it considers its consumables business, a substantial portion of which is constituted by health and beauty aids.