A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

Rising energy bills are confronting U.S. households (and indeed, health citizens in many parts of the world) due to extreme heat, PBS reported on 1st September. But the record heat waves in so much of the world is impacting both peoples’ fiscal and financial well-being along with physical health impacts, ranging from exacerbating chronic respiratory conditions to, literally, risks to lives.                     A recent letter to JAMA, published August 26, 2024, quantifies Trends of Heat-Related Deaths in the U.S., 1999-2023. The authors examined studies finding exposure to extreme heat associated with mortality,

From bandages to home hygiene, OTC pain meds and DIY home projects, Morning Consult’s look into the most-trusted brands of 2024 give us insights into health consumers. I’ve been tracking this study since before the public health crisis of the coronavirus, and it always offers us a practical snapshot of the U.S. consumer’s current ethos on trusted companies helping people risk-manage daily living — and of course, find joy and satisfaction as well. In the top 15, we find self-care for health and well-being in many brands and products: we can call out Band-Aid, Dove, Colgate, Kleenex, and Tylenol. For

The food industry, both retail food chains and food suppliers, has found health and nutrition are having a positive impact on their businesses both for margins and for missions, we learn in the latest annual survey on Food Industry Contributions to Health & Well-being, 2024, from FMI. Most retail food channels operate pharmacies, three in five operate clinics in stores, and 2 in 5 of the clinics are health system-owned and operated.             FMI, the Food Industry Association, conducted this industry poll in October 2023 among food retail and supplier members, totaling 36 organizations representing over

Radiology and radiologists play starring roles in our health care, with he core work flow of diagnostic imaging supporting prevention, disease detection, diagnosis, delivering and monitoring therapy, linking specialists to other providers in telehealth, and as a medium for teaching clinicians, patients and caregivers. As health care delivery continues to change and adapt to technological innovations, demographic shifts, and economic-social-political forces, so, too, are the roles of radiology and radiologists in motion.       Every year when American Thanksgiving weekend comes along, you’ll find folks involved in digital imaging flocking to chilly Chicago to convene at McCormick Place for

As most Americans confess to feeling stressed over the past six months, peoples’ food and beverage choices have been intimately connected with their mental and emotional well-being, we learn from the 2023 Food & Health Survey from the International Food Information Council (IFIC). For this year’s study, IFIC commissioned Greenwald Research to conduct 1,022 interviews with adults between 18 and 80 years of age in April 2023. The research explored consumers’ perspectives on healthy food, the cost of food, approaches to self-care through food consumption, the growing role of social media in the food system, and the influence of sustainability

You’ve heard of the social determinants of health (SDoH), the driving factors that shape a person’s health beyond medical care. These include lifestyle behaviors such as smoking and food consumption, education, job security and wage stability, transportation and safe/clean physical environments, among other issues. There’s another lens on drivers of health that impact our well-being, the commercial determinants of health (CDoH). The Lancet‘s collection of research published online on March 23, 2022 explores CDoH’s role in shaping public and individual health, along with potential calls-to-action for addressing these challengres.               Start with a definition of

While CTA forecasts a sobering consumer technology revenue picture for 2023, one of the few bright spots is health and fitness technology services, expected to increase by 9 percent in 2023.             For the forecast, CTA looked at various spending categories, including gaming, automotive and transportation tech, video and audio streaming, consumer electronics (like big-screen TVs), and fitness and health devices. The chart illustrates that consumers’ spending on software and services is expected to hold steady in 2023, still above pre-pandemic levels.             On 3 January, in the annual #CES

There is an image from my childhood, drawn by Lorraine Schneider, which reads “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” As I read through a paper published this week on climate change’s contribution to the burden of chronic disease, I couldn’t help but conjure up Lorraine’s observation from my little girl memory bank. One of the largest meta-analyses mashing up research evidence on the impact of climate change on human health was featured in the journal Nature Climate Change this week. Lorraine could replace the word “war” with “climate change” and be clinically sound in the eyes

When we think about the state of Trust in in mid-2022, there is some good news: Trust is rising (at least in democratic countries, while falling in autocratic ones). The bad news: the gap in Trust has dramatically widened between higher-income people compared with those earning lower-incomes, globally.             And that gap is “tinder” that can be quickly sparked into a socio-political fire in countries around the world, Richard Edelman cautioned today when introducing the latest look at the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, focusing on geopolitics and business. We have never seen numbers like this

As health care industry stakeholders and policymakers have begun to recognize and address the underlying drivers of peoples’ health, there’s another acronym that is taking hold in health care beyond SDoH: that is ESG, standing for Environment Social, and Governance pillars of responsibility and activity.               To mark this Earth Day 2022, I’ve written a brief primer on ESG for the health care community published today in the Medecision Liberate Health blog. Here in Health Populi, I’ll give you a few highlights with graphics you won’t see in that essay to illustrate some key

People spend one-half of their lives in “less-than-good health,” we learn early in the paper, Adding years to life and life to years from the McKinsey Health Institute. In this data-rich essay, the McKinsey team at MHI sets out an agenda that could help us add 45 billion extra years of higher-quality life equal to an average of six years per person (depending on your country and population demographics). The first graphic from the report illustrates four dimensions of health and the factors underneath each of them that can bolster or diminish our well-being: personal behaviors (such as sleep and diet),

Before the coronavirus emerged, the top causes of death in developed countries were heart disease, cancers, diabetes, and accidents. Then COVID-19 joined the top-10 list of killers in the U.S. and the issue of pandemic preparedness for the next “Disease X” became part of global public health planning. But the biggest health threat to human life is climate change, according to a new report from the World Health Organization titled The Health Argument for Climate Action. It’s WHO’s special report on climate change and health, dedicated to the memory of Ella Kissi-Debrah — a child who died succumbing to impacts

Some of America’s least-healthy communities are also those that index greater for vaccine hesitancy and other risks for well-being, found in U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 Healthiest Communities Rankings. U.S. News collaborated with the Aetna Foundation, CVS Health’s philanthropic arm, in this fourth annual list of the top geographies for well-being in the U.S. Six of the top ten healthiest towns in America are located in the state of Colorado. But #1 belongs to Los Alamos County, New Mexico, which also ranked first in ___. Beyond Colorado and New Mexico, we find that Virginia fared well for health in

Consumers favorite brands in 2021 are baked with health, from medical care through to the social determinants that make our wellness and mental health better, based on the 2021 Prophet Brand Relevance Index. The top ten brands in 2021 are Apple (the top brand for the sixth year in a row), Peloton, KitchenAid, Mayo Clinic, LEGO, Costco, Honda, Johns Hopkins Medicine, PlayStation, and Amazon. In this year’s study, Prophet remarked that, “Almost overnight, they’ve [consumers] reconsidered beloved names like Disney, making room for brands that serve them better…As they weather some bleak moments, consumers want brands that will commit to

One in two U.S. adults say their concerns about personal health and wellness increased in the past year: in particular, stress and anxiety, and sleep and eating habits. Despite spending more time at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, few people believe they live in a “healthy home.” The vast majority of consumers are concerned about some aspect of their home’s health, like air or water quality, according to Healthy Home Technologies , a report published in October 2020 by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), convener of the annual CES. For the research, CES interviewed 1,500 U.S. adults in late

My cousin Arlene got married in Detroit at the classic Book Cadillac Hotel on July 23, 1967, a Sunday afternoon wedding. When Daddy drove us back out to our suburban home about 30 minutes from the fancy hotel, the car radio was tuned to WWJ Newsradio 950, all news all the time. As soon as Daddy switched on the radio, we were shocked by the news of a riot breaking out in the city, fires and looting and gunshots and chaos in the Motor City. Two days later, my father, who did business with Mom-and-Pop retail store owners in the

In American health economics, there’s a demand side and a supply side. On the demand side, we’ve done a poor job trying to nudge patients and consumers toward rational economic decision making, lacking transparency, information symmetry, and basic health literacy. On the supply side, we’ve engaged in a medical arms race allocating capital resources to shinier and shinier new things, often without cost-benefit rationale or clinical evidence. On that supply side, though, I met up with an innovation that can help to bend the capital cost curve of how we envision and build new hospitals and clinics. This week, I

If it’s true that “your ZIP code is more important than your genetic code,” you’d look for a job in 22046, buy a house there, and plant your roots. You’d find yourself in Falls Church, Virginia, named number one in the Healthiest Communities rankings of 500 U.S. towns. You can see a list of all of the communities here. The project is a collaboration between the Aetna Foundation and U.S. News & World Report, with help from the University of Missouri Center for Applied Research and Engagement Systems (CARES) and a team from the National Committee on Vital and Health

Health permeates a plethora of TIME magazine’s 25 Best Inventions of 2017. From head to foot, health is the mother of invention, based on TIME’s curation of “the best” things launched to market in the past year. Starting with “the head,” the Oculus Go virtual reality (VR) headset from Facebook. While the first function with which VR is associated is fun and games, Dr. Brennan Spiegel at UCLA Geffen School of Medicine has been proving out VR‘s value in helping patients deal with pain and medical management. Keep your eye on his and others’ research into VR’s use in healthcare. The

We make our health across many dimensions: via nutrition, safe physical/built environments, financial wellness, education, and the environment among them. In this last category, the environment, new research finds that climate change has a significant impact on health. The report, Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance, was sponsored by the American Psychological Association in conjunction with Climate for Health and ecoAmerica. “Climate change-induced severe weather and other natural disasters have the most immediate effects on mental health in the form of the trauma and shock due to personal injuries, loss of a loved one, damage to

Among TIME magazine’s 25 best inventions of 2015, most relate directly or adjacently to health and health care. Among the 25 are: The EKO Stethoscope A gluten-sniffing sensor, the 6SensorLabs Nima The Sproutling baby monitor Nike Flyease 8 shoes, that you can tie with one hand Cogni-Toys Dino, the toy that talks back A smart refrigerator that can fix you a glass of nutrient-enriched water The TZOA environmental tracker for personal pollution sensing, measuring atmosphere in a specific area (e.g., temperature, particulates such as dust, pollen, mold, and car exhaust), and UV ­exposure Doppler Labs Here Active Listening earbuds The

‘Tis the summer of big, smart reports covering the Internet of Things (IoT) impact on health and fitness. Just this month, three of these missives have come to my inbox, and they all contribute sound thinking about the topic. Today, tomorrow and Friday, I’ll cover each of these here in Health Populi. We begin with McKinsey Global Institute’s The Internet of Things: Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype. [In full disclosure, I was an outside adviser to the MGI team members who focused on the human/health and fitness aspects of this report, and thank MGI for the opportunity to provide

“Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it,” Lily Tomlin once quipped. Perhaps in 2014, America is the land of stress because we’re all so in touch with reality. THINK: reality TV, social networks as the new confessional, news channeling 24×7, and a world of too much TMI. So no surprise, then, that one-half of the people in the U.S. have had a major stressful event or experience in the last year. And health tops the list of stressful events in This American Life in the forms of illness and disease (among 27% of people)

There’s truly good news for public health about smoking: January 11th marked the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health. That’s five decades’ worth of progress raising peoples’ awareness about the toxic impact of nicotine and chemicals embodied in cigarettes, and deleterious impacts on health and the economy. As a result, smoking rates have been cut in half since 1964, as the downward-sloping graph illustrates. With that happy news in my subconscious, I took a long walk, tracked by my digital device, through the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas last week, bound for the 2014 Consumer Electronics

Coast-to-coast, stress is the modus vivendi for most Americans: 55% of people feel stressed in every day life, according to a study from Televox. A Stressful Nation: Americans Search for a Healthy Balance paints a picture of a nation of physically inactive people working too hard and playing too little. And far more women feel the stress than men do. 64% of people say they’re stressed during a typical workday. 52% of people see stress negatively impacting their lives. And nearly one-half of people believe they could better manage their stress. As a result, physicians say that Americans are experiencing negative

Patient and health engagement is the flavor du jour in health circles these days, from the corridors of hospitals to the caffeinated marketing meetings in Big Pharma’s east coast meet-ups. But there’s no standard agreement on what we mean by peoples’ health engagement, whether by patient or well consumer. In Market Insights: The Evolution of Consumer Engagement in Health Care, Porter Research endeavors to deepen our understanding of this important concept. In the introductory section of the paper, “Understanding Engagement,” Porter proffers that industry – providers, payers and employers – consider engagement as “changing consumer behavior through increased participation in consumers’ own health

People who live in U.S. cities with low levels of well-being have twice the rate of heart attacks as people who live in healthier America. That’s 5.5% of the population in sicker America versus 2.8% of the population living in healthy America. The first chart illustrates this disparity, taken from the Gallup-Healthways index that examined 190 metropolitan areas in 2012. Based on this study, it’s good to live in parts of Utah, Nebraska and Colorado, but not so healthy to be a resident in West Virginia, Alabama, and parts of Kentucky and Ohio. Heart disease and diabetes are killing a plurality

…and I’m not talking about GE here (or here). Most people (75%) still view phone calls as the communication mode that best bolsters their relationships compared with texting (66%), picture messaging (35%), sharing on social networks (31%), emailing (25%), , and video chatting (9%). U.S. Cellular, the mobile phone company, surveyed 527 customers in April 2013 to learn about how wireless communication can bring “Better Moments” to peoples’ lives. In particular, people say that mobile phones help them: Communicate more frequently (77%) Share experiences right away (66%) Share moments that would have otherwise been missed (52%). 9 in 10 people take pictures on

Health, happiness and engagement among employees are closely-linked and drive productivity in the workplace. But there’s a gap between the kind of wellness services employers offer workers to bolster health, and the programs that people actually want. The current state of employer wellness programs is described in a survey conducted by Virgin HealthMiles and Workforce, The Business of Healthy Employees: A Survey of Workplace Health Priorities, published in June 2013. There’s a gap between what workers want for wellness and what employers are offering. Most-demanded by workers are health on-site food choices desired by 79% of employees; but, only 33%

The registered dietitian is an in-demand labor resource for grocery stores around the U.S. Advertising Age covered the phenomenon of the growing clout of dietitians in food chains (April 14, 2013). Let’s dig further into this phenomenon through the Health Populi lens on healthcareDIY and peoples’ ability to bend their personal health care cost curves. Stores such as Giant Eagle, Hy-Vee, Safeway and Wegmans are morphing into wellness destinations, with pharmacies and natural food aisles taking up valuable square footage to meet consumers’ growing demands for healthy choices. Some stores are formalizing their approach to food = health by formulating a

The latest in SoLoMo (Social, Local, Mobile) Health is a gamified tool coupled with a hardware kiosk, known as higi. The brainchild of Michael Ferro, a successful dotcom entrepreneur who now owns the Chicago Sun-Times, higi’s mission is to help people – particularly younger peeps – to take better care of themselves by scoring points and, as a result, social connections. Higi’s an African word for origin, so the health tool has some aspects relating to being in a tribe — a kind of health tribe. It also has a fun sound to it, Ferro noted, which sets the vibe

In 2010, the folks who supported health care reform were massacred by the polls, Bill Clinton told a rapt audience of thousands at HIMSS13 yesterday. In 2012, the folks who were against health care reform were similarly rejected. President Clinton gave the keynote speech at the annual HIMSS conference on March 6, 2013, and by the spillover, standing-room-only crowd in the largest hall at the New Orleans Convention Center, Clinton was a rock star. Proof: with still nearly an hour to go before his 1 pm speech, the auditorium was already full with only a few seats left in the

There are many ways to measure and express “patient engagement.” One such metric is “patient activation,” innovated by Dr. Judith Hibbard, long affiliated with the University of Oregon. Dr. Hibbard has written extensively about the Patient Activation Measure, PAM, first described in 2004. She and a team of researchers have determined that the higher a patient’s PAM score, the lower their health costs. Hibbard et. al. published these findings in the February 2013 issue of Health Affairs, which is entirely devoted to patient engagement – a top topic in Health Populi. The team analyzed the medical records of 33,163 patients

Reed Tuckson of UnitedHealthGroup was the first panelist to speak at the kickoff of the Digital Health Summit, the fastest-growing aspct of the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (#2013CES). Tuckson implored the spillover audience to all, “self-deputize as national service agents in health,” recognizing that technology developers in the room at this show that’s focused on developers building Shiny New Digital Things have much to bring to health. As Andrew Thompson of Proteus Medical (the “invisible pill” company) said, “we can’t bend the health care cost curve; we have to break it.” This pioneering panel was all about offering new-new technologies

Notwithstanding the fact that most phones on U.S. streets are “smart” ones, most adults surf the net for health information, and most people try to change a health habit each year, Americans haven’t adopted healthier long-term relationships with food. The International Food Information Council has conducted the Food & Health Survey: Consumer Attitudes Toward Food, Safety, Nutrition & Health poll since 2006, thus enabling us to track peoples’ attitudes and behaviors over the past several years. The latest polling results appear in Is it Time to Rethink Nutrition Communications? A 5-Year Retrospective of Americans’ Attitude toward Food, Nutrition, and Health online in

In our fast-texting, quick-thinking, Blink-ing society, Jason Riis talks about slowing down our relationship with food. At the Edelman Wellness Ignited meet-up on March 26, 2012, Jason riffed on food  intervention and economics for healthy eating. Jason is a professor at Harvard Business School and among his many research interests is how to change culture to morph away from obesity and Type 2 diabetes toward health. The U.S. is a shopping nation: retail is destination, fun, entertaining, life, for millions of Americans. Jason’s asking what retailers can do about fast and food. This isn’t only about ‘fast food,’ which, of course,

There’s a shift in power in health care moving away from providers and suppliers like pharma and medical device companies, toward patients and payers. This is the new health world according to Ernst & Young‘s latest Progressions report called, The third place: health care everywhere. What’s underneath this tectonic shift is the need to bend that stubborn cost curve and address public health outcomes through behavior change. E&Y says look for new entrants, like retailers, IT companies, and telecomms, to be part of the solution beyond traditional health care stakeholders. These participants will be part of both delivery of care

Chronic illness represents $3 of every $4 of annual health spending in the U.S. That’s about $1.5 trillion. Living Well With Chronic Illness, a report from The Institute of Medicine (IOM), issues a “call for public health action” to address chronic illness through: – Adopting evidence-based interventions for disease prevention – Developing new public policies to promote better living with chronic disease – Building a comprehensive surveillance system that integrates quality of life measures, and – Enhancing collaboration among health ecosystem stakeholders: health care, health, and community non-healthcare services. The IOM recognizes the social determinants that shape peoples’ health status

The Internet, broadband, mobile health platforms, and consumers’ demand for more convenient health care services are fueling the development and adoption of health technologies in peoples’ homes. However, designing products that people will delight in using is based on incorporating human factors in design. Human factors are part of engineering science and account for the people using the device, the equipment being used, and the tasks the people are undertaking. The model illustrates these three interactive factors, along with the outer rings of environments: health policy, community, social, and physical. Getting these aspects right in the design of health technologies meant for

Without trust, health consumers won’t engage with organizations who want to cure them, sell to them, promote to them, help them. Here’s what I told a group of  pharmaceutical marketers at The DTC Annual Conference in Washington , DC, on April 9, 2010. Let’s start with the World Health Organization’s definition of health: that is, the state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, and not just the absence of disease. This definition is being embraced by health citizens long before the silos in the health industry – including pharma – get it. That’s an important mindset to take on as