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Loneliness As Risk Factor for Health and Medication Adherence

The role of loneliness and social isolation plays into every aspect of human health, beyond mental and behavioral impacts: loneliness is a risk factor for overall health status and well-being, as well as a barrier to medication adherence, we learn in Loneliness and Health Behaviors: A Missing Link in Chronic Care from Pleio. Pleio launched the report at the Assembia AXS25 Conference in Las Vegas yesterday, Pleio surveyed 2,008 U.S. adults in March 2025 living with at least one chronic condition to gauge patients’ perspectives on loneliness, health outcomes, and peoples’ adherence to prescribed medicines.            

 

The Era of Healthcare Grievance: The Edelman Trust Barometer’s Take on Health and Trust in 2025

Health citizens globally are feeling and behaving more empowered with respect to their personal health from physical and mental health to social and environmental. Most people believe they can identify good sources of health information, with nearly one in two consumers 18-34 believing an average person can know as much as a doctor. But too many people feel unwell compared to how they felt during the pandemic, and most think major institutions are preventing them from accessing quality care and services which is resulting in an ethos of health care grievance.                 These

 

A Profile of Health Consumer-Generations’ Use of Digital Health – Rock Health Takes Us Through the Ages

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on 23 April 2025 in Aging, Aging and Technology, Baby Boomers and Health, Behavior change, Big Tech, Boomers, Broadband, Cardiovascular health, Caregivers, Connected health, Connectivity, Consumer electronics, Consumer experience, Consumer-directed health, Demographics and health, Design and health, Diet and health, Digital health, Digital therapeutics, Digital transformation, DTC health, Employee benefits, Employers, Financial health, Fitness, Food and health, Health access, Health apps, Health at home, Health care industry, Health Consumers, Health costs, Health Economics, Health ecosystem, Health education, Health engagement, Health equity, Health marketing, Health Plans, Health privacy, Healthcare DIY, Heart disease, Heart health, Home economics, Home health, Hospital to home, Internet and Health, Internet of things, Medicaid, medical home, Medical technology, Medicare, Medication adherence, Men's health, Mental health, Mobile apps, Mobile health, Moms and health, Money and health, Nutrition, Omnichannel healthcare, Out of pocket costs, Patient engagement, Patient experience, Peer-to-peer health, Physicians, Play and health, Popular culture and health, Prevention, Prevention and wellness, Primary care, Privacy and security, Reproductive health, Retail health, Retirement and health, Self-care, Seniors and health, Sensors and health, Shared decision making, Shopping and health, Sleep, Smart homes, Smartphone apps, Smartphones, Smartwatches, Social determinants of health, Social health, Social networks and health, Sports and health, Techquity, Telehealth, Telemedicine, Trust, User experience UX, Virtual health, Wearable tech, Wearables

In the past year, most consumers in the U.S. have used virtual care, tracked at least one health metric digitally, and own a wearable or connected health device. Digital health has certainly gone mainstream across U.S. consumers, with varying utilization and motivation by generation, we learn in the report,   Screenagers to Silver Surfers: How each generation clicks with care from Rock Health.               To segment health consumers by age/generation, the RH team mined the firm’s 10th Consumer Adoption of Digital Health Survey which polled over 8,000 U.S. adults in 2024 on peoples’ perspectives

 

“The Church As Field Hospital” – Learning from Pope Francis About the Power of Loneliness and Connection

“I see the church as a field hospital after battle.”                 The death of Pope Francis gives me reason today to turn to one of the key themes he spoke about during his years leading the Catholic Church. That is, the Church as Field Hospital. Healthwise, the Pope had a history of respiratory conditions which began in his early 20s when he had surgery to remove a piece of his lung affected by an infection. Still, he lived to a ripe 88 years of age, participating in Easter Sunday’s morning mass at The

 

Health Insurance Coverage Among Smaller U.S. Businesses Is Eroding: A Signal From JPMorganChase

Working-age people in the U.S. depend on their employers to provide health insurance; just over one-half of people in America receive employer-sponsored health insurance. But a concerning signal has emerged that calls into question how sustainable the uniquely American employer-sponsored health plan model is: that is that one in 3 small businesses in the U.S. stopped covering health insurance after the worst of the pandemic health effects in 2023 as the companies payroll expenses continued to increase, a statistic raised in The consistency of health insurance coverage in small business: industry challenges and insights, a report from the JPMorganChase Institute

 

U.S. Health Care in 2025 Requires Scenario Planning: The Uncertainties (AI!?) That Inspire DIY Healthcare

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on 15 April 2025 in Artificial intelligence, Big Tech, Broadband, Cardiovascular health, Caregivers, Clinical trials, Connected health, Consumer electronics, Consumer experience, Consumer-directed health, CX, Demographics and health, Design and health, Determinants of health, Diabetes, Diet and health, Digital health, DIY, DTC health, Empathy, Employee benefits, Employers, Environment and heatlh, Family, Food and health, Food as medicine, Food security, Future of health care, GenAI, Global Health, GLP-1s, Health access, Health apps, Health at home, Health benefits, Health care industry, Health citizenship, Health Consumers, Health disparities, Health Economics, Health ecosystem, Health equity, Health insurance, Health IT, Health literacy, Health Plans, Health policy, Health politics, Health social networks, Healthcare access, Heart disease, Heart health, Home care, Home economics, Home health, Hospital to home, Hospitals, Housing and health, Literacy, Loneliness, Love and health, Medicaid, Medical bills, Medical innovation, Medical technology, Medicare, Medicines, Nutrition, Obesity, Out of pocket costs, Participatory health, Patient engagement, Patient experience, Pharmaceutical, Pharmacy, Popular culture and health, Prescription drugs, Public health, Remote health monitoring, Retail health, Risk management, Safety net and health, SDoH, Self-care, Sensors and health, Shopping and health, Sleep, Social determinants of health, Social health, Social isolation, Social networks and health, Social security, Telehealth, Transparency, Uninsured, User experience UX, Virtual health, War and health, Wearable tech, Wearables, Weight loss, Workplace benefits

As Weight Watchers prepares to initiate bankruptcy proceedings, I file the news event under “thinking the unthinkable.”                     “Thinking about the unthinkable” is what Herman Kahn, a father of scenario planning, asked us to do when he pioneered the process. In this book, for Kahn, “the unthinkable” was thermonuclear war, and the year was 1962. The book was tag-lined as “must reading for an informed public” and in it, Kahn             I’ve been drawn back to this book lately because of a more intense workflow using

 

Most Americans Don’t Want to Cut Medicaid (Including Republicans)

With potential down-sizing of Medicaid on the short-term U.S. political horizon, a fascinating poll found that most people identifying as Republican would not favor cuts to Medicaid. What fascinates me about this survey, published earlier this week, is that it was conducted by FabrizioWard, a polling firm that has often been used by President Trump.              The firm’s Bob Ward told POLITICO that, “There’s really not a political appetite out there to go after Medicaid to pay for tax cuts. Medicaid has touched so many families that people have made up their minds about what

 

The Biggest Opportunity for Sporting Goods is Consumers’ Physical Inactivity: Learning from McKinsey (with a personal nod to pickleball)

McKinsey just published a detailed report into Sporting Goods 2025, which the firm calls a “new balancing act” that must turn uncertainty into opportunity.               The report is based on five key observations: Only a few sporting goods companies have expanded growth and margins since 2018 — and must “rethink the value chain” in the face of challenging geopolitical headwinds One-half of so-called “active consumers” say that fitness is a core element of their identity, with emotional connections to brands they purchase for the lifestyle Incumbent sporting goods companies are losing market share to

 

Are We Liberated Yet? Tariffs Can Impact Financial Health (Riffing on MoneyLion’s Health Is Wealth Report)

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on 7 April 2025 in Anxiety, Behavioral health, Business and health, Caregivers, Consumer electronics, Consumer experience, Consumer-directed health, Demographics and health, Dental care, Depression, Determinants of health, Diagnostics, Diet and health, Doctors, DTC health, Employee benefits, Employers, Exercise, Family, Financial health, Financial toxicity, Financial wellness, Fitness, Food and health, Food as medicine, Food security, Future of health care, Gender equity, Gender equity and health, Global Health, Grocery stores, Happiness, Health access, Health and wealth, Health at home, Health benefits, Health care industry, Health citizenship, Health Consumers, Health costs, Health disparities, Health Economics, Health ecosystem, Health education, Health engagement, Health equity, Health finance, Health marketing, Health media, Health politics, Healthcare access, High deductibles, Home care, Home economics, Home health, Hospital finance, Hospital to home, Hospitals, Housing and health, Jobs and health, Maternal health, Medical device, Medical technology, Medication adherence, Medicines, Mental health, Moms and health, Money and health, Nutrition, Out of pocket costs, Pain, Patient engagement, Patient experience, Personal health finance, Pharmaceutical, Pink tax, Popular culture and health, Prescription drugs, Prevention, Prevention and wellness, Public health, Race and health, Retail health, Retirement and health, Safety net and health, SDoH, Self-care, Seniors and health, Shopping and health, Sleep, Social determinants of health, Social health, Social isolation, Social networks and health, Social security, Stress, Tariffs, Trust, Wellbeing, Wellness, Women and health

Americans’ financial health was already stressing consumers out leading up to Liberation Day, April 2nd, when President Trump announced tariffs on dozens of countries with whom the U.S. buys and sells goods. A new report from MoneyLion and Mastercard called Health is Wealth is well-timed for today’s Health Populi blog. The study was fielded by The Harris Poll online among 2,092 U.S. adults 18 and older between February 28 and March 4, 2025, so it was completed a month before the tariffs came to hit peoples’ 401(k) savings and employers’ company stock market caps.              

 

How BioPharma Can Improve Consumers’ Experience and Health

Patients as health consumers now know what “good” looks like in their digital experiences. People have tasted the convenience and respect they feel from well-designed, streamlined omnichannel retail experiences, and they now expect this from health care — specifically supported by the pharmaceutical companies who manufacture the medicines they use in managing chronic conditions, we learn in ixlayer ixInsights 2025: Pharma’s Role in Improving the Health Experience from ixlayer and Ipaos.             The patient-focused report gets specific about people dealing with asthma, COPD, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, psoriasis, and atopic dermatitis with a lens on

 

What is a Consumer Health Company? Riffing Off of Deloitte’s Report on CHCs/A 2Q2025 Look at Self-Care Futures

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on 1 April 2025 in Aging, Aging and Technology, AI, AI and health, Artificial intelligence, Augmented intelligence, Baby Boomers and Health, Banks and health, Big Tech, Bio/life sciences, Bioethics, Boomers, Business and health, Chronic care, Chronic disease, Climate change, Connected health, Consumer electronics, Consumer experience, Consumer-directed health, Corporate responsibility, Corporate wellness, Data analytics and health, Demographics and health, Design and health, Diagnostics, Diet and health, Digital health, Digital therapeutics, Digital transformation, Environment and heatlh, ESG and health, FDA, Financial health, Financial wellness, Fitness, Food and health, Food as medicine, Future of health care, Global Health, Grocery stores, Health access, Health apps, Health at home, Health benefits, Health care industry, Health citizenship, Health Consumers, Health costs, Health ecosystem, Health engagement, Health insurance, Health marketing, Health media, Health Plans, Health policy, Health politics, Health privacy, Health Quality, Health regulation, Healthcare access, Healthcare DIY, Home care, Home economics, Home health, Hospital to home, medical home, Medical innovation, Medical technology, Misinformation and health, Mobile apps, Money and health, Nutrition, Omnichannel healthcare, OTCs, Out of pocket costs, Participatory health, Patient engagement, Patient experience, Personal health finance, Personalized medicine, Pharmacists, Pharmacy, Popular culture and health, Population health, Prescription drugs, Prevention and wellness, Primary care, Privacy and security, Public health, Remote health monitoring, Retail health, Self-care, Seniors and health, Shopping and health, Social health, Social responsibility, Sustainability, Techquity, Telehealth, Travel and health, Trust, Value based health, Virtual health, Wellbeing

The health care landscape in 2030 will feature an expanded consumer health industry that will become, “an established branch of the health ecosystem focused on promoting health, preventing, disease, treating symptoms and extending healthy longevity,” according to a report published by Deloitte in September 2024, Accelerating the future: The rise of a dynamic consumer health market. While this report hit the virtual bookshelf about six months ago, I am revisiting it on this first day of the second quarter of 2025 because of its salience in this moment of uncertainties across our professional and personal lives — particularly related to