Health, Politics, Inflation and Women: Health Engagement at the Voting Booth
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/KFF-Aug-2022-abortion-two-thirds-against-overturn-of-Roe.png)
Two in three Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision (aka the Dobbs case), the latest Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll found. While inflation tops voters’ priorities, abortion access resonates for key voting blocs. KFF conducted this survey among 1,847 U.S. adults 18 and over between July 7 and 17, 2022. KFF published the study findings this week on August 2, a day of political primaries and ballot considerations in several U.S. states. Consider Kansas: a majority of Kansans voted on Tuesday to protect abortion rights
Patient Support Isn’t Just About the Price of Therapy: It’s About Safety, Really Rich Data and Trust
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Deloitte-post-launch-patient-support-value-chain-surveillance.png)
When I talk about patient support programs (PSPs), I’m most often focused on supporting peoples’ access to medicines due to costs, bolstering health literacy, and addressing health citizens’ risks of drivers of health that can be obstacles to optimal health outcomes (those challenging social determinants of health). A new report from Deloitte on Intelligent post-launch patient support speaks to another crucial definition of patient support: post-market surveillance and patient safety. The paper’s central thesis is that improving patient support is a critical step in the biopharma value chain, illustrated in the first diagram
The Retail Health Battle Royale, Day 5 – Consumer Demands For a Health/Care Ecosystem (and What We Can Learn from Costco’s $1.50 Hot Dog)
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/JSK-curation-of-retail-health-zeitgeist-week-of-July-25-2022-with-title-and-source.png)
In another factor to add into the retail health landscape, Dollar General (DG) the 80-year old retailer known for selling low-priced fast-moving consumer goods in peoples’ neighborhoods appointed a healthcare advisory panel this week. DG has been exploring its health-and-wellness offerings and has enlisted four physicians to advise the company’s strategy. One of the advisors, Dr. Von Nguyen, is the Clinical Lead of Public and Population Health at Google….tying back to yesterday’s post on Tech Giants in Healthcare. Just about one year ago, DG appointed the company’s first Chief Medical Officer, which I covered here in
The Retail Health Battle Royale in the U.S. – A Week-Long Brainstorm, Day 1 of 5
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Aflac-Amazon-health-care-experience-with-copyright.png)
I’ve returned to the U.S. for a couple of months, having lived in and worked from Brussels, Belgium, since October 2021 (save for about ten days in March 2022). Work and life slow down in Europe in July and August, giving us the opportunity to return to our U.S. home base, reunite with friends and family, and re-join life and living this side of the Atlantic. The timing of my return to the U.S. coincides with a retail health hurricane of big announcements shaking up the health/care ecosystem. Among these events are Amazon’s plan to acquire One Medical, Apple’s publication of
Gas ‘N Healthcare – How Transportation Links to Health Care Access and Financial Health
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Gas-and-health-care-for-July-19-2022-HP-blog-on-inflation-and-health-spending.png)
Some patients dealing with cancer at Mercy Health’s Lourdes Hospital have been supplied with gas cards. This gesture is enabling families to get to medical appointments around Paducah, Kentucky where, this week, car drivers faced regular gas priced at an average of $4.16 a gallon compared with $2.92 one year ago. Here’s the Hospital’s Facebook page featuring their gratitude to FiveStar Food Mart, the American Cancer Society, and the Mercy Health Foundation. “By providing cancer patients with gas cards, the cancer care team at Mercy Health Lourdes Hospital in Paducah hopes to mitigate financial challenges
Your State as a Determinant of Health: Sharecare’s 2021 Community Well-Being Index
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Sharecare-2021-map-by-quintile.png)
People whose sense of well-being shifted positively in the past two years are finding greater personal purpose and financial health, we see in Sharecare’s Community Well-Being Index – 2021 State Rankings Report. Sharecare has been annually tracking well-being across the 50 U.S. states since 2008. When the study launched, Well-Being Index evaluated five domains: physical, social, community, purpose, and financial. In 2020, Sharecare began a collaboration with the Boston University School of Public Health to expand the Index, including drivers of health such as, Healthcare access (like physician supply per 1,000
More Americans Trust Small Biz and the Military than the Medical System, Gallup Finds
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Gallup-trust-in-instituiton-falling-graph.png)
The most trusted institutions in the U.S. are small business and the military, the only two sectors in which a majority of Americans have confidence. Americans’ trust in institutions hit new historic lows in 2022, Gallup found in its latest poll of U.S. sentiment across all major sectors. Today, more Americans have faith in the police than in the medical system, according to a Gallup poll finding that Confidence in U.S. Institutions Down; Average at New Low. published this week of Independence Day 2022. Confidence runs from a higher of 68% for
Consumers’ Dilemma: Health and Wealth, Smartwatches and Transparency
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/GWI-dilemma-4-trends.png)
Even as spending on healthcare per person in the United States is twice as much as other wealthy countries in the world, Americans’ health status ranks rock bottom versus those other rich nations. The U.S. health system continues to be marred by health inequalities and access challenges for man health citizens. Furthermore, American workers’ rank top in the world for feeling burnout from and overworked on the job. Welcome to The Consumer Dilemma: Health and Wellness,, a report from GWI based on the firm’s ongoing consumer research on peoples’ perspectives in the wake of
The Higher Cost of Cookouts – Happy, Healthy Independence Day 2022
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/July-4-2022-cookout-costs-up.jpg)
On this July 4th holiday, Americans aren’t feeling quite so financially independent on Independence Day 2022. The cost of a cookout for your family and friend group of 10 rose over $10 this year, 17% higher than in 2021, based on the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual assessment of BBQing Economics on the Fourth of July. This estimate is based on a market-basket menu that includes cheeseburgers, pork chops, chicken breasts, homemade potato salad, strawberries and ice cream. Key factors driving up the cost of an All-American cookout include supply chain disruptions (a hangover
Changing Views of Retirement and Health Post-COVID: Transamerica’s Look At Workers’ Disrupted Futures
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TransAmerica-Retirement-2022-report-cover.png)
As more than 1 in 3 U.S. workers were unemployed during the pandemic and another 38% had reductions in hours and pay, Americans’ personal forecasts and expectations for retirement have been disrupted and dislocated. In its look at The Road Ahead: Addressing Pandemic-Related Setbacks and Strengthening the U.S. Retirement System from the Tramsamerica Center for Retirement Studies (TCRS), we learn about the changing views of U.S. workers on their future work, income, savings, dreams and fears. Since 1988, TCRS has assessed workers’ perspectives on their futures, this year segmented the 10,003 adults
Use of Preventive Health Services Declined Among Commercially Insured People – With Big Differences in Telehealth for Non-White People, Castlight Finds
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Castlight-Health-prevention-down-claims.png)
Declines in preventive care services like cancer screenings and blood glucose testing concern employers, whose continued to cover health insurance for employees during the pandemic. “As we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers continue to battle escalating clinical issues, including delayed care for chronic conditions, postponed preventive screenings, and the exponential increase in demand for behavioral health services,” the Chief Medical Officer for Castlight Health notes in an analysis of medical claims titled Millions of People Deferred Crucial Care During the Pandemic, published in June. The
The 2022 US Health System Report Card: Pretty Terrific If You Live in Hawaii or Massachusetts
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/CMWF-2022-health-system-rankings-by-state-HI-vs-MS.png)
The best U.S. states to live in for health and health care are Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Washington, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Maryland… Those are the top health system rankings in the new 2022 Scorecard on State Health System Performance annual report from the Commonwealth Fund. If you live in Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Texas, Missouri, Alabama, Georgia, or Arkansas, your health care and outcomes are less likely to be top-notch, the Fund’s research concluded. The Commonwealth Fund has conducted this study since 2006, assessing a range
We Are Stuck On Band-Aids, Hygiene, and Self-Care: Morning Consult’s Most Trusted Brands 2022
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Morning-Consult-brands-most-trusted-in-the-US-2022.png)
We are stuck on Band-Aids and hooked on hygiene and self-care according to the Most Trusted Brands 2022 study from Morning Consult. In 2022, the most trusted brands in the United States were Band-Aid Lysol Clorox UPS CVS Health (pharmacy) VISA Cheerios The Weather Channel Colgate, and Home Depot. These products and companies sustain trends I tracked in Years 1 and 2 of the COVID-19 pandemic when several of these were most-trusted, bolstering peoples’ lives living in, working from, and making health at home. Four key trends underscore
Healthcare access, racial disparities, guns and climate – U.S. doctors are worried about some big social issues
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Medscape-2022-social-issues-top-issues.png)
Doctors heads and hearts are jammed with concerns beyond curing patients’ medical conditions: U.S. physicians are worried about big social issues, according to a Medscape survey report, Physicians’ Views on Today’s Divisive Social Issues 2022. Topping physicians’ list of their top-five most important social issues, far above all others ranked healthcare access. Underneath that top-line statistic, it’s important to note that: 52% of doctors are “very concerned” about healthcare access, 28% are “concerned,” and 13% are “somewhat concerned.” Medscape underscores that in 2020, 31 million U.S. residents had no health insurance coverage, and
Jasper, Scaling a Human Touch for People Dealing with Cancer, Now With Walgreens
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Jasper-better-cancer-experience-for-all.png)
Each year, the first Sunday in June marks National Cancer Survivors Day. This year’s NCSD occurred two days ago on Sunday, 5th June. When you’re a cancer survivor, or happen to love one, every day is time to be grateful and celebrate that survival of someone who has come through a cancer journey. We all know (or are) people who have survived cancer. We know that the recipe for battling cancer goes beyond chemotherapy. We know of the resilience and grit required in the process: body, mind, and spirit. “Celebrate Life” is the mantra of NCSD, as this year’s campaign
The Health of Older Americans in 2022 – Risks from the Pandemic, Isolation, and Social Determinants
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/United-Healthcare-SDoH-graphic.png)
For millions of older people in America, health and well-being got worse in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Physical, mental and behavioral health took hits, depending on one’s living situation, social determinants of health risks, and even health plan, I write in the Medecision Liberate Health blog. In this essay on health disparities and equity for older adults, I weave together new data from, The United Health Foundation’s study on seniors’ health status in America’s Health Rankings for 2022 RAND and CMS research into seniors health disparities among Medicare Advantage
Social Determinants of Health Risks Challenge the Promise of Hospital-to-Home
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/McKinsey-hospital-to-home-quote.png)
In the wake of the pandemic and growing consumer preferences, the hospital-to-home movement is gaining traction among health systems. Amidst bullish forecasts for the promise of hospital-to-home discharges, the ability for many patients to make this migration would be a difficult bridge to cross. On the promising front, recent studies reviewed through a meta-analysis published in JAMA found that hospital-to-home programs can be clinically and cost-effective for inpatients discharged from hospital. Earlier this year, McKinsey addressed how “Care at Home” ecosystems can reshape the way health systems — and people — envision patient care. This
The Patient as Consumer and Payer – A Focus on Financial Stress and Wellbeing
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/CarePayment-experience-embedded-PNG.png)
Year 3 into the COVID-19 pandemic, health citizens are dealing with coronavirus variants in convergence with other challenges in daily life: price inflation, civil and social stress, anxiety and depression, global security concerns, and the safety of their families. Add on top of these significant stressors the need to deal with medical bills, which is another source of stress for millions of patients in America. I appreciated the opportunity to share my perspectives on “The Patient As the Payer: How the Pandemic, Inflation, and Anxiety are Reshaping Consumers” in a webinar hosted by CarePayment on 25 May 2022. In this
Food, Cars, and Tech: Here’s How U.S. Consumers Rank Companies’ Reputations – the 2022 Axios-Harris Poll
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2022-Axios-Harris-Poll-PPT-with-logos-Top-30-JSK-curated-5-25-22.png)
We’re all about food and cars and our technology, looking at the 2022 Axios Harris Poll 2022 Reputation Rankings published this week. I’ve curated the logos of the top 30 companies based on the Poll’s survey of 33,096 U.S. adults conducted in March and April 2022. The survey assessed peoples’ awareness of companies that either “excel or falter in society,” according to the study methodology. Here you see the top 30. The COVID-19 pandemic bolstered consumers’ awareness and call-to-action for peoples’ basic needs: food, working-from-home (thus, tech as a determinant of health and wellbeing),
Mental Health Risks in Mid-2022 Related More to Global Anxieties and Safety, Not-So-Much COVID
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/APsychA-Healthy-Minds-May-2022-more-anxious-about-world-events-safety-health.png)
With peoples’ anxiety about COVID-19 at its lowest point since 2020, folks are most anxious in spring 2022 about current global events and the safety of their families, based on the latest Healthy Minds study from the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Morning Consult conducted the poll for the APA in March and April 2022 among 2,210 U.S. adults. The survey covered peoples’ perspectives on mental health care, anxiety, COVID-19, children’s mental health, and the workplace. The results were published May 22, 2022. The key findings of the study were that, 3 in 4 people are
How Trust and Geopolitics Will Impact Health and Business – Edelman 2022 Trust Barometer at the World Economic Forum in Davos
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Edelman-2022-Davos-top-10-geopolitical-business.png)
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
Health Care Costs At Retirement in 2022 Hit $315,000, Fidelity Forecasts
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Fidelity-21st-annual-retirement-health-care-cost-estimates-315K-May-2022.png)
A couple retiring in 2022 should budget $315,000 to cover their health care costs in retirement, based on the 21st annual Retiree Health Care Cost Estimate from Fidelity Investments. For context, note that the median sales price of a home in the U.S. in April 2022 was $391,200. It’s important to understand what the $315,000 for “health care costs” in retirement does not cover, explained in Fidelity’s footnoted methodology: the assumption is that the hypothetical opposite-sex couple is enrolled in Original Medicare (not Medicare Advantage), and the cost estimate does not include other health-related expenses
Stress Is Playing A Big Role in Consumers’ Food Habits: Food-As-Medicine Update from IFIC
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/IFIC-2022-stress-is-up.png)
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated consumers, globally, to take on more DIY roles as well as self-care for health and well-being. In addition, anxiety and stress are mainstream across demographics and have impacted the way people select and consume food, based on findings in the 2022 Food and Health Survey from the International Food Information Council (IFIC). In this 17th annual consumer survey, IFIC points to two underlying macro trends that are re-shaping peoples’ relationship with food and health: the pandemic’s impact, and “significant” generational shifts in taste, consumption, and values about nutrition and sustainability.
Reimagining Health Care Without Walls – Deloitte’s Vision
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Deloitte-hospital-without-walls-six-areas-of-impact.png)
Delivering health care during the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic proved to both patients and their clinicians that virtual care was not only a viable channel for care, but very often a preferable “place” to collaborate for treatment. Even before the coronavirus pandemic emerged in early 2020, telehealth and the hospital-to-home movement were beginning to become part of a portfolio of delivery modes across the continuum of care. Deloitte spells out the current and future prospects for the Hospital in the future “without” walls in a new report that spells out driving forces, future scenarios, and impacts on a business long
Health is Our Most Important Relationship: Inconvenient Truths from MRM/McCann Truth Central
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/MRM-health-is-our-most-important-relationship.png)
We’ve hit a great “healthcare trust” recession around the world, translating into lower multiple points of medical ‘facts’ and pseudoscience, lower adherence to therapeutic regimens, and clinician burnout that has compromised medicine as the team sport it ideally should be. And that’s just one of five inconvenient truths unearthed in The Truth About Our Relationships with Health, the first in a series of papers that MRM is developing to, in their words, “look at the truths pr7eventing us from achieving a better relationship with our own health and with those along our health journey.” This report from MRM analyzes research
Three in Five People 50+ in the US Will Likely Use Telehealth In the Future – An Update from AARP
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AARP-telehealth-use-over-50-holding-steady-from-April-20-by-age-break.png)
“Telehealth certainly appears to be here to stay,” the AARP forecasts in An Updated Look at Telehealth Use Among U.S. Adults 50-Plus from AARP. Two years after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, one-half of U.S. adults over 50 said they or someone in their family had used telehealth. In early 2022, over half of those over 50 (the AARP core membership base) told the Association they would likely use telehealth in the future. This future expectation varies by race, the implications of which I discuss below in
People Thinking More About the Value of Health Care, Beyond Cost
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/West-Health-Gallup-health-care-affordability-index-by-political-party-ID-and-age.png)
The rate of people in the U.S. skipping needed health care due to cost tripled in 2021. This prompted West Health (the Gary and Mary West nonprofit organizations’ group) and Gallup to collaborate on research to quantified Americans’ views on and challenges with personal medical costs. This has resulted in The West Health-Gallup Healthcare Affordability Index and Healthcare Value Index. The team’s research culminated in the top-line finding that some 112 million people in the U.S. struggle to pay for their care. That’s about 4.5 in 10 health citizens. Furthermore, 93% of people
The Demand for Self-Care At-Home Will Grow Post-Pandemic – Insights from IRI
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/IRI-webinar-on-retail-CPG-year-2-COVID-shifts-likely-for-2023-self-care-circled.png)
The coronavirus pandemic has re-shaped consumers across many life- and work-flows. When it comes to peoples’ relationship to consumer packaged goods (CPG), the public health crisis has indeed impacted consumers’ purchasing behaviors and definition of “value,” based on IRI’s latest analysis of CPG shifts in 2022 and 2023. IRI has been tracking COVID-19’s impact on CPG and retail since the emergence of the coronavirus. In this Health Populi post, I’ll discuss the research group’s assessment of CPG shifts of consumer packaged goods through my lens on health/care, everywhere — especially, in this case, the home.
How Health Gets Built – The Building H Index Thinking Health-By-Design
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Building-H-can-we-reimagine-how-we-design-and-live-health-by-design.png)
“It’s hard to be healthy in the U.S. today.” That is the underlying premise and reason for The Building H Index. Health happens outside of doctors’ offices and hospital operating rooms. Health is made in our homes, in our communities, in our daily lives as we go about working, playing, learning, and praying. Too often, in those daily life-flows, making a healthy decision is harder than defaulting to a less-healthy one. Sometimes, it’s pretty impossible given the state of, say, air quality that we breathe, lack of fresh produce and whole foods at the corner market, or seductively designed automobiles
Health Care and ESG on Earth Day 2022
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Bank-of-American-health-care-ESG-PNG.png)
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
The Color of Care – Oprah and The Smithsonian Channel Partner on Health Equity
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/color-of-care-65k.jpg)
A new documentary and educational campaign on health equity will be launched on May 1st, 2022, from Oprah’s Harpo Productions studio partnering with The Smithsonian Channel. The Color of Care documents stories of people who have lost loved ones in the COVID-19 pandemic as well as expert interviews with frontline workers and public health experts and researchers sharing data on systemic racism in health care that has underpinned racial health disparities since slavery was instituted in America. Oprah’s website talked about the project, quoting her saying, “At the height of the pandemic, I read something that stopped me in
How Business Can Bolster Determinants of Health: The Marmot Review for Industry
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Marmot-Sir-Nigel-Wilson-quote-CEO-Legal-and-General-not-just-capitalism-for-the-rich-2.png)
“Until now, focus on….the social determinants of health has been for government and civil society. The private sector has not been involved in the discussion or, worse, has been seen as part of the problem. It is time this changed,” asserts the report, The Business of Health Equity: The Marmot Review for Industry, sponsored by Legal & General in collaboration with University College London (UCL) Institute of Health Equity, led by Sir Michael Marmot. Sir Michael has been researching and writing about social determinants of health and health equity for decades, culminating publications
Making The Joy Choice for Our Health and Well-Being – a conversation with Michelle Segar
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Joy-Choice-cover.jpg)
“Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once,” Paulo Coelho wrote in his novel, The Winner Stands Alone. Coelho is talking about the all-too-human condition of facing situations that are unplanned which test our patience, resilience, and grit. Our best-laid plans go awry – especially those for healthy behaviors, like exercising and eating well. Enter Michelle Segar, PhD, MPH, MS, NIH-funded researcher at the University of Michigan, sustainable-behavior-change expert, and health coach. Michelle is our go-to sage for helping us
In the New Inflationary Era, Gas and Health Care Costs Top Household Budget Concerns
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/KFF-March-2022-tracking-gas-and-health-care-KFF-PNG.png)
Inflation and rising prices are the biggest problem facing America, most people told the Kaiser Family Foundation March 2022 Health Tracking Poll. Underpinning that household budget concern are gas and health care costs. Overall, 55% of people in the U.S. pointed to inflation as the top challenge the nation faces (ranging from 46% of Democrats to 70% of Republicans). Second most challenging problem facing the U.S. was Russia’s invasion into Ukraine, noted by 18% of people — from 14% of Republicans up to 23% of Democrats. The COVID-19 pandemic has fallen far down Americans’ concerns list tied third place with
McKinsey’s Six Shifts To Add Life to Years — and One More to Consider
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/McKinsey-longevity-global-disease-burden.png)
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),
The Financial Toxicity of Health Care Costs: From Cancer to FICO Scores
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ACS-51-pct-incurred-medical-debt.png)
The financial toxicity of health care costs in the U.S. takes center stage in Health Populi this week as several events converge to highlight medical debt as a unique feature in American health care. “Medical debt is the most common collection tradeline reported on consumer credit records,” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau called out in a report published March 1, 2022. CFPB published the report marking two years into the pandemic, discussing concerns about medical debt collections and reporting that grew during the COVID-19 crisis. Let’s connect the dots on: A joint announcement this week from three major credit agencies,
Primary Care in the U.S. – Still a Weak Backbone for the Health of Health Citizens
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/CMWF-primary-care-US-least-like-to-have-PCP.png)
Compared with health citizens living in other wealthy countries, people living in the U.S. are still among the least likely to have a regular doctor or place to go for care. Thus, millions of Americans continue to lack access to primary care compared with peers in other nations, according to a report from The Commonwealth Fund. The Commonwealth Fund has tracked primary care access for many years, and over time has found the United States to lack the kind of primary care “backbone” that many wealthy nations have — whose health citizens also enjoy much better health outcomes that relate
Techquity: How Technology Can Help to Scale Health and Digital Equity, Live from VIVE 2022
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Techquity-Ipsos-and-VIVE-report-graphic-3-8-22.png)
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed long-systemic health disparities in the U.S. and in other parts of the world. Income inequality, sickly environments in homes and communities (think unclean air and water), lack of public transportation and nutritious food deserts combine to limit peoples’ health and well-being., Beyond the traditional social determinants of health, such as these, we’ve called out another health risk that became crucial for life in the coronavirus pandemic era: digital connectivity, Indeed, WiFi and broadband represent the newest social determinant of health to add to a growing list of risk factors that challenge health citizens’ health. Kudos to
Brand Relevance Has A Lot To Do with Health, Wellness, and Empowerment – Listening to (the) Prophet
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Prophet-Brand-Relevance-2022-List-of-50-top-brands.png)
s in the seventh annual 2022 Brand Relevance Index from Prophet. The research developed a list of 50 companies representing what Prophet characterizes “the brands that people can’t live without in 2022.” For the 7th year in a row, Apple tops the study. Following Apple, the nine companies rounding out the top ten most relevant brands were Peloton, Spotify, Bose, Android, Instant Pot, Pixar, Fitbit, TED, and USAA. There are relative newbies in this list, representing consumers’ collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and new life-flows. Put Calm and AfterPay in that category, along with Beyond Meat, and Zelle. The
Doximity Study Finds Telehealth Is Health for Every Day Care
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Doximity-telemedicine-2022-health-care-for-all-across-race-ethnicity.png)
There’s more evidence that doctors and patients, both, want to use telehealth after the COVID-19 pandemic fades. Doximity’s second report on telemedicine explores both physicians’ and patients’ views on virtual care, finding most doctors and health consumers on the same page of virtual care adoption. For the physicians’ profile, Doximity examined 180,000 doctors’ who billed Medicare for telemedicine claims between January 2020 and June 2021. Telemedicine use did not vary much across physician age groups. Doctors in specialties that manage chronic illnesses were more likely to use telehealth: endocrinology (think: diabetes), gastroenterology, rheumatology, urology, nephrology, cardiology, ENT, neurology, allergy, and
Michael Graves and CVS Health – A Match Made in Health Design Heaven
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/CVS-Graves-and-4-features-erg-custom-simple-ease-of-assembly.png)
On the Michael Graves Design company’s website, they talk about “Design for All” and “The House and Everything in it.” “Michael Graves Design exists to offer products that create moments of joy in your life.” Prominently featured in the Health section on the homepage are “walking canes reimagined.” The company has unveiled its partnership with CVS Health to continue the architect-turned-disability rights advocate’s legacy combining brilliant design with mainstream retail accessibility and another riff on accessibility: for health care and caregiving. Graves passed away in 2015. He continues to inspire the Michael Graves Design team/family with the mission: “By focusing
Love and Health: The Education of Abner Mason, SameSky Health
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Abner-bias.jpg)
It felt super appropriate that I met up with Abner Mason, Founder of SameSky Health, on Valentine’s Day 2022. While we conversed via Zoom, Abner’s positive energy vibrated over the 5,600 miles between him in LA County and me in Brussels, Belgium – nine hours apart, but in the proverbial same room in the conversation. My initial ask of Abner was to discuss the re-branding of ConsejoSano to SameSky Health, but I first wanted to hear the man’s origin story. And that, you will learn, has everything to do with loving parents, the power of education from a young age,
On Valentine’s Day 2022, Let’s Remember That Love is a Social Determinant of Health
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/JSK-THINK-Health-WiFi-Heart-Logo-Jan-2022.png)
While love can’t solve all of the world’s problems, it is absolutely a basic human need and a positive force for health and well-being. For today’s Health Populi blog, I have curated a big hug-full of posts I’ve written over the years building the evidence base of love as a determinant of health. As a sidebar, the graphic you see here — my “WiFi Heart” — was purposefully commissioned to my web designer to incorporate elements of love and connectivity. Wishing you all the blessing of love in your life, in all of its glorious and health-ful forms…XO JSK My
The Wellness Economy in 2022 Finds Health Consumers Moving from Feel-Good Luxury to Personal Survival Tactics
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/GWI-global-wellness-economy-bubble-chart-2020.png)
The Future of Wellness in 2022 is, “shifting from a ‘feel-good’ luxury to survivalism as people seek resilience,” based on the Global Wellness Institute’s forecast on this year’s look into self-care and consumer’s spending on health beyond medical care — looking beyond COVID-19. GWI published two research papers this week on The Future of Wellness and The Global Wellness Economy‘s country rankings as of February 2021. I welcomed the opportunity to spend time for a deep dive into the trends and findings with the GWI community yesterday exploring all of the data, listening through my health economics-consumer-technology lens. First, consider
How Twitter Revealed Consumer Health Care Trends in the Pandemic
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Twitter-health-birdseye-cover-of-report.png)
During the pandemic, millions of people connected with Twitter to share thoughts and feelings about the pandemic…and their health. Three mega-trends bubbled up on the platform for health — telemedicine and virtual care, broadband access, and mental health, discussed in a Birdseye Report Industry Deep Dive into Health from Brandwatch, partnering with Twitter. For this report, Brandwatch utilized only English-language public Twitter data. Brandwatch collated and analyzed tweets between January 1st 2019 and November 20 2021, that mentioned any of the following phrases: telemedicine, telehealth, virtual care, digital medicine, digimedicine, mental health, doom scrolling, trauma dumping, and meeting fatigue. Tweets
Women’s Health, ESG and FootbalI: Why I’m Excited To Tune Into Hologic’s Ad During Super Bowl LVI
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Hologic-a-champion-for-women.png)
One of the best parts of watching the biggest U.S. football game of the year are the ads which can provide great entertainment in-between touchdowns, time-outs, and referees’ video replays. This year, Ad Age provides us with an early inventory of some of the high-expectation commercials, including the usual suspects like Budweiser, Google, TurboTax, and Avocados from Mexico. For the first time, cryptocurrency brands will advertise on the Super Bowl, too. But I’m most looking forward to seeing the 30-second spot from Hologic, the medical technology company. AdWeek wrote, quoting a Hologic press release, “As a leader in women’s health,
How Virtual Care Will Play Out in 2022 – a Look Post-CES and JPM
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Valeo-car-scaled.jpg)
A new study from CIGNA and its subsidiary MDLive touts the cost-effectiveness of telehealth to improve health outcomes, reducing the need for unnecessary lab work, reducing duplication of care, and connecting patients with high-performing providers. It is expected that one in three patient visits will be virtual, CIGNA quotes from an Accenture forecast. As more consumers used telehealth channels during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, patients experienced virtual care. For many people, these visits matched or exceeded expectations compared with in-person encounters with clinicians, as well as satisfying on convenience and access values. How will virtual care play
From Better for Me to Better for “We” — NielsenIQ’s New Consumer Hierarchy of Health
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/NielsenIQ-wellness-2022-upside-down-Maslow-and-5-types-of-needs.png)
People around the world have made health a “proactive priority,” most important to live a longer, healthier life, to avoid preventable diseases, to protect against disease, and to look and feel healthier, according to NielsenIQ’s latest health and wellness report. As the triangle here illustrates, NielsenIQ has turned Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs upside down, shifting protective and physical needs to the top rung and altruistic — the “me-to-we” ethos — at the base. Note the translations of these needs, on the ride, into the “care” flows — moving from urgent care down to self-care, preventive care, innovative care, and selfless
The Trust Deficit Is Bad for Health: A Health/Care Lens on the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Edelman-2022-health-is-cornerstone-to-core-needs-and-cornerstone-to-trust.png)
“Health is the cornerstone to our core needs, thereby the cornerstone to trust.” So wrote Kirsty Graham, Global Leader of Sectors and Global Chair of Health at Edelman, in an essay explaining the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer. If it’s January, it must be time for the World Economic Forum in Davos, the annual setting for Edelman’s launch of the company’s Trust Barometer. While WEF is mostly virtual this year due to the pandemic, Edelman has released the survey of global citizens’ views on trust in institutions right on-time and in full and sobering detail. I welcome and dig into the
Building Health Equity Through Faith and Food – the Black Church Food Security Network
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/BCFSN.png)
Members of his congregation kept going to the hospital with diet-related issues, Reverend Dr. Heber Brown, III, realized. “I got tired of praying and hoping they made it and walked out,” Reverend Brown realized. And then… “God gave us an idea and vision to be proactive on the issue of health in our congregation,” Rev. Brown explained to us yesterday on Day 2 of Real Chemistry’s Health Equity Summit. This was the seed for the Black Church Food Security Network, planting a pragmatic vision for health and well-being weaving together local food, civic empowerment, economic development, and faith. “We had
Health Care Planning for 2022 – Start with a Pandemic, Then Pivot to Health and Happiness
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Medecision-JSK-post-for-2022-forecast-graphic.png)
One of my favorite Dr. Seuss characters is the narrator featured in the book, I Had Trouble In Getting to Solla-Sollew. I frequently use this book when conducting futures and scenario planning sessions with clients in health/care. “The story opens with our happy-go-lucky narrator taking a stroll through the Valley of Vung where nothing went wrong,” the Seussblog explains. Then one day, our hero (shown here on the right side of the picture from the book) is not paying attention to where he is walking….thus admitting, “And I learned there are troubles of more than one kind, some come from
The 2022 Health Populi TrendCast for Consumers and Health Citizens
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2022-TrendCast-calendar.png)
I cannot recall a season when so many health consumer studies have been launched into my email inbox. While I have believed consumers’ health engagement has been The New Black for the bulk of my career span, the current Zeitgeist for health care consumerism reflects that futurist mantra: “”We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run,” coined by Roy Amara, past president of Institute for the Future. That well-used and timely observation is known as Amara’s Law. This feels especially apt right “now” as we enter 2022,
3 in 4 Insured Americans Worried About Medical Bills — Especially Women
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/MITRE-Harris-survey-summary-slide.png)
In the U.S., being covered by health insurance is one of the social determinants of health. Without a health plan, an uninsured person in America is far more likely to file for bankruptcy due to medical costs, and lack access to needed health care (and especially primary care). But even with health insurance coverage, most health-insured people are concerned about medical costs in America, found in a MITRE-Harris Poll on U.S. consumers’ health insurance perspectives published today. “Even those fortunate to have insurance struggle with bills that result from misunderstanding or underestimating costs of treatments and procedures,” Juliette Espinosa of
Does Inequality Matter in the U.S.? Health and the Great Gatsby Curve
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/OECD-does-inequality-matter-US-less-govt-responsibility-vs-all-other-OECD-32.png)
Compared with the rest of the developed world, people living in the U.S. may be concerned about income inequality, but their demand for income redistribution is the lowest among peer citizens living in 31 other OECD countries. In their latest report, Does Inequality Matter? the OECD examines how people perceive economic disparities and social mobility across the OECD 32 (the world’s developed countries from “A” Australia to “U,” the United Kingdom). Overall the OECD 32 average fraction of people who believe it is the government’s responsibility to reduce income differences among those who think disparities are too large is 80%
Health Citizens Link Their Views on Democracy, the Economy and the Pandemic
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Pew-health-citizens-demand-significant-report.png)
The pandemic has put health care top-of-mind for health citizens the world over. As the public health crisis continues its up-and-downticks around the globe, people are connecting health care to their national economies and politics, based on a global survey from the Pew Research Center, Citizens in Advanced Economies Want Significant Changes to Their Political Systems. For this analysis, the Pew research team assessed the views of some 2,600 health citizens living in 17 developed countries in February 2021. The study report was published in late October 2021. Shown in the first bar chart, the majority of people in at least
Effective Health Spending Is An Investment, Not a Cost: the Bottom-Line from OECD Health at a Glance 2021
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/OECD-Health-at-a-Glance-US-excess-deaths-among-all-other-OECD-countries-e1636382891630.png)
“The pandemic has shown that effective health spending is an investment, not a cost to be contained: stronger, more resilient health systems protect both populations and economies,” the OECD states in the first paragraph of the organization’s perennially-updated report, Health at a Glance 2021. This version of the global report incorporates public health data from the “OECD35,” 35 nations from “A” to “U” (Australia to United States) quantifying excess deaths experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the obesity epidemic, mental and behavioral health burdens, and health care spending, among many other metrics. The first chart illustrates that calculation of excess deaths,
Designing Digital Health for Public Health Preparedness and Equity: the Consumer Tech Association Doubles Down
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/CTA-connected-tech-for-COVID-Nov-3-e1635773092702.png)
A coalition of health care providers, health plans, technology innovators, NGOs, and medical societies has come together as the Public Health Tech Initiative (PHTI), endorsed by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) with the goal of advancing the use of trustworthy digital health to proactively meet the challenge of future public health emergencies….like pandemics. At the same time, CTA has published a paper on Advancing Health Equity Through Technology which complements and reinforces the PHTI announcement and objective. The paper that details the PHTI program, Using Heath Technology to Response to Public Health Emergencies, identifies the two focus areas: Digital health
Still Struggling with Stress in America in 2021
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/APA-Stress-in-AMerica-2021-cover.png)
“Americans remain in limbo between lives once lived and whatever the post-pandemic future holds,” the American Psychological Association observes in their latest read into Stress in America 2021, with this phase of the perennial study focused on Stress and Decision-Making During the Pandemic. The top-line: people face a daily web of risk assessment, up-ended routines, and endless news about the coronavirus locally and globally. While most people in the U.S. believe that “everything will work out” after the pandemic ends, the mental, emotional, and logistical daily distance between “now” and “then” brings uncertainty and indeed, prolonged stress. More Millennials, who
Be Mindful About What Makes Health at HLTH
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/SDoH-beyond-health-care.png)
“More than a year and a half into the COVID-19 outbreak, the recent spread of the highly transmissible delta variant in the United States has extended severe financial and health problems in the lives of many households across the country — disproportionately impacting people of color and people with low income,” reports Household Experiences in America During the Delta Variant Outbreak, a new analysis from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NPR, and the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. As the HLTH conference convenes over 6,000 digital health innovators live, in person, in Boston in the wake of the delta
The Biggest Threat to Our Health Isn’t the Next Pandemic or Cancer…It’s Climate Change
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/WHO-climate-change-in-detail.png)
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
Consider Mental Health Equity on World Mental Health Day
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/NHS-Scotland-mental-health-day.png)
COVID-19 exacted a toll on health citizens’ mental health, worsening a public health challenge that was already acute before the pandemic. It’s World Mental Health Day, an event marked by global and local stakeholders across the mental health ecosystem. On the global front, the World Health Organization (WHO) describes the universal phenomenon and burden of mental health on the Earth’s people… Nearly 1 billion people have a mental disorder Depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide, impacting about 5% of the world’s population People with severe mental disorders like schizophrenia tend to die as much as 20 years earlier
Genentech’s Look Into the Mirror of Health Inequities
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Genentech-1-in-2-medically-disenfranchised-patients-stopped-seeking-care-for-fear-of-not-being-understood-e1632918164697.png)
In 2020, Genentech launched its first study into health inequities. The company spelled out their rationale to undertake this research very clearly: “Through our work pursuing groundbreaking science and developing medicines for people with life-threatening diseases, we consistently witness an underrepresentation of non-white patients in clinical research. We have understood inequities and disproportionate enrollment in clinical trials existed, but nowhere could we find if patients of color had been directly asked: ‘why?’ So, we undertook a landmark study to elevate the perspectives of these medically disenfranchised individuals and reveal how this long-standing inequity impacts their relationships with the healthcare system
Chronic Medical Conditions, Mental Health, and Equity On Employers’ Minds for 2022 – Employee Health in the Wake of COVID-19
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Business-Group-on-health-large-employers-goals-post-COVID-19-e1632433663712.png)
One in two people in the U.S. receive health insurance through employers. As large employers tend to be on the vanguard of benefit plan design, it’s useful to understand how these companies are thinking ahead on behalf of their employees. With that objective, it’s always instructive to explore the annual study from the Business Group on Health, the 2022 Large Employers’ Health Care Strategy and Plan Design Survey. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, large employees have many concerns about worker and dependents’ health. The biggest firms in America providing health insurance for workers are expecting an increase in
#HelloHumankindness and Happy New Year….
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Hello-humankindness-png.jpg)
When Dignity Health, the Catholic health care system, launched the “Hello humankindness” PR campaign in June 2013, well, they had me at “Hello.” When the project went live, Dignity Health’s President/CEO Lloyd Dean provided the rationale for the program, saying: “What’s missing in the public discourse about health care is the fact that while medicine has the power to cure, it’s humanity that holds the power to heal.” Dean pointed to two drivers shaping U.S. culture and the nation’s health care industry: The institutionalization of health care, and, The decline of civility in society. That was 2013. #HelloHumankindness sought to
Necessity is the Mother(board) – How COVID-19 Inspires Local Communities to Build Broadband
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/US-broadband-speeds-dip-below-FCC-base-definition-NTIA-map-June-2021-e1631635854228.png)
“The simple fact is that the federal and state governments are doing almost nothing to help people who have a broadband service available that partially meets their needs but abuses them with regular price hikes, spotty reliability, and poor customer service. Local governments will continue to step in to build better networks because communities have very few other options.” That “necessity is the mother” motivation to build broadband comes from Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). [FYI, Mitchell’s Twitter handle is @communitynets]. Mitchell is quoted in the story, New data
The Risk of Food and Nutrition Security in America – A Bipartisan Concern and Call-to-Action from the BPC
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/BPC-report-cover.png)
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated food insecurity in the U.S., a situation that was already challenging for millions of American families before the public health crisis emerged. While several Congressional and administrative actions were implemented in 2020 and the first half of 2021, the issue of food insecurity — defined as being unable to acquire enough food due to insufficient money or resources — remains a tragic aspect of daily living for many Americans — and especially for children who live in households where jobs have been lost and incomes reduced. Nutrition security has also been a health risk where people
#LoveThyNeighbor – A Faith-Based Call for Vaccination
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Catholic-Healthcare-Assn-love-they-neighbor-1.png)
The Catholic Health Association (CHA) is urging Americans to “love thy neighbor” by getting the COVID-19 vaccine, Sister Mary Haddad wrote in an editorial published in Modern Healthcare, published on September 3, 2021. Sister Mary is CEO and President of CHA. “Some may suggest that there are moral and religious concerns to receiving the COVID-19 vaccine,” Sister Mary observed. “We strongly affirm the position of the leaders of the Catholic Church: the vaccines are morally acceptable and getting vaccinated is “an act of love.” she asserted. CHA launched a portal on the act of love, featuring lots of science-based articles
Health Disparities in America: JAMA Talks Structural Racism in U.S. Health Care
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/JAMA-disparities-cover-issue-PNG.png)
“Racial and ethnic inequities in the US health care system have been unremitting since the beginning of the country. In the 19th and 20th centuries, segregated black hospitals were emblematic of separate but unequal health care,” begins the editorial introducing an entire issue of JAMA dedicated to racial and ethnic disparities and inequities in medicine and health care, published August 17, 2021. This is not your typical edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The coronavirus pandemic has changed so many aspects of American health care for so many people, including doctors. Since the second quarter of 2020,
Nurses and Aides Are Beloved and Deserve Higher Pay; and a Spotlight on the Filipinx Frontline
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/AP-NORC-Aug-2021-3-things-to-know-exec-summary.png)
A majority of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans agree that nurses are underpaid. Most Americans across political parties also believe that hospital executives are overpaid, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The survey analysis is aptly titled, Most Americans Agree That Nurses and Aides Are Underpaid, While Few Support Using Federal Dollars to Increase Pay for Doctors, . Insurance executives are also overpaid, according to 73% of Americans — an even higher percent of people than the 68% saying hospital execs make too much money. In addition to nurses being underpaid, 6 in 10
Our Pandemic Lessons: Listening to Michael Dowling – a #HIMSS21 Wrap-Up
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/NEWS_Michael-Dowling-20-Minute-Health-Talk-1.jpg)
“We don’t un-learn,” Dr. Amy Abernethy asserted as she shared her pandemic perspectives on a panel with 2 other former U.S. health policy and regulatory leaders. The three spoke about navigating compliance (think: regulations and reimbursement) in an uncertain world. An uncertain world is our workplace in the health/care ecosystem, globally, in this moment. So to give us some comfort in our collective foxhole, my last post for this week of immersion in #HIMSS21 is based on the keynote speech of Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health. Dowling keynoted on the theme of “Leading for the Future,” sharing his lessons
Healthcare Via the Cloud, Across the Enterprise and in the Patient’s Home – a Sustainable View from Philips at HIMSS 2021
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Philips-future-index-sustainable-quote-e1628712650442.png)
The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a reappraisal of value-based care, a shift to remote and virtual care, and acceleration of healthcare stakeholders’ investments in Artificial Intelligence-based solutions, Philips discovered in the 2021 Future Health Index, the company’s latest survey conducted among 2,800 health care leaders working in 14 countries. This week at the 2021 annual HIMSS conference, Philips is “making the case for moving to the cloud,” discussing the Philips HealthSuite, a cloud-based platform for connecting providers and patients, devices (and the data they generate), and care across the health care continuum. That’s a big promise and vision, so to kick
Zoom Became a Household Name in the Pandemic. It’s Working to Do the Same in Healthcare – At #HIMSS21
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Zoom-health-care-in-US.png)
The COVID-19 pandemic digitally transformed most people living in the U.S., re-shaping consumers to work from home when possible, go to school there, and buy all manners of goods and services via ecommerce. In March 2021, Zoom conducted research into the question, “how virtual do we want our future to be?” posing that to thousands of citizens living in 10 countries including the U.S. As the first chart from the study illustrates, most people in America expect hybrid lifestyles, from fitness and retail to entertainment and education. And 7 in 10 U.S. health citizens want their health care to be
Empathy Is As Important as the Medical Treatment – the 2021 Accenture Health Experience As Backdrop to HIMSS 2021
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Acc-Health-Consumers-2021-empathy-as-important-as-medical-treatment.png)
The rise of digital health investment and growing role of technology in health care services only accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, people took on their own versions of digital transformation at home, for work, for school, for cooking, shopping, and indeed, for health care. But with digital health adoption gains has come some ambivalence and mixed signals, Accenture has discovered in its 2021 Health and life Sciences Experiences Survey released this week during the HIMSS Annual Conference. As the report concludes, “people’s sentiments and behaviors” with respect to technology in health care “provide no clear answer.”
Can the U.S. Improve Health System Performance with Digital Health Tools? Pondering A Big Question for #HIMSS21
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Commonwealth-fund-mirror-mirror-perfomance-vs-spending.png)
Simply put, is the equation, “Spend more, get less” a sustainable business model? Of course not. But that’s the simple math on U.S. health care spending and what comes from it, according to Mirror, Mirror 2021: Reflecting Poorly, a perennial report from The Commonwealth Fund that compares health system performance across eleven developed countries. The first table details the metrics that the Fund compares across the eleven peer nations, which included Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The metrics compared were access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity,
Americans Grew Digital Health-Data Muscles in the Pandemic – New Insights from the Pew Charitable Trusts
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Pew-Americans-want-to-share-data-cover.png)
“Most Americans clearly recognize the potential benefits that improved health IT can offer, and they want this transformation of the health care system to continue,” the Pew Charitable Trusts research concludes in Most Americans Want to Share and Access More Digital Health Data. The Pew team surveyed 1,213 adults ages 18 and over in June and July 2020, interviewing in English and Spanish. As digital health industry stakeholders will be convening at the 2021 annual HIMSS conference in Las Vegas and digitally, this report is well-timed to give us a level-set on just “where” U.S. health citizens are with respect to
Women’s Health Re-shaped by COVID-19
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Medeicsion-graphics-Jul-21-KFF-womens-health-care-less-in-pandemic-e1627413890243.png)
While women continue to outlive men in the U.S. in terms of life expectancy, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed continued healthcare access, physical and mental health disparities, and economic inequities for women in America. I addressed the changing state of post-pandemic women’s health in my latest contribution to the Medecision Liberation blog. This first graphic illustrates how women interacted with the U.S. health system during the pandemic in 2020. These data come from Kaiser Family Foundation’s women’s health survey conducted from the beginning of the pandemic starting March 1, 2020, and discovered that women in poorer or fair more likely went
What Poor Birth and Maternity Outcomes in the U.S. Say About American Healthcare & “Infrastructure”
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Maternal-mortality-CMWF-e1626445165535.png)
Cain Brothers is a 100+ year old financial services firm with a strong health care experience, now part of KeyBanc. A recent “House Calls” memo and podcast from two company analysts detailed the state of Medicaid, Motherhood and America’s Future: Giving Birth to Better Maternity Outcomes. Christian Pesci and David Johnson’s in-depth discussion detailed their bottom-line that, “maternity care in the U.S. is in crisis but poised for rapid evolution…(recognizing) that an uncoordinated system with misaligned incentives harms too many individuals, families, and communities.” They lay out the crisis as follows: Medicaid funds nearly one-half of births in the U.S.
CVS Finds Differences in Mental and Behavioral Health Among Men Vs. Women in the Pandemic
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/CVS-health-2021-consumer-survey-mental-health-impacts-July-2021-e1626207487275.png)
As the COVID-19 pandemic shifts to a more endemic phase — becoming part of peoples’ everyday life for months to come — impacts on peoples’ mental health will persist, according to new research from CVS Health in the company’s annual Health Care Insights Study. CVS conducted the annual Health Care Insights Study among 1,000 U.S. adults in March 2021. To complement the consumer study, an additional survey was undertaken among 400 health care providers including primary care physicians and specialists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, RNs and pharmacists. CVS has been tracking the growing trend of health care consumerism in the
The Many Factors That Make a Child’s Well-Being Build Our Adult Health – the Aspirational OECD Framework
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/OECD-childrens-wellbeing-circle-graph-e1625658700667.png)
The ultimate health and wellbeing of an adult depends on the factors that shape us when we are children. A new, deep report from the OECD, Measuring What Matters for Child Well-being and Policies, spells out the many domains of experience that, together, bolster our whole health as we grow from child to adult. The first chart presents the OECD’s framework for measuring child well-being, calling out the nature of being “aspirational.” This re-look at children’s health data is aspirational because it is laying out how to best measure child well-being to set the bar higher for doing so. It addresses
Digital Inclusion As Upstream Health Investment
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Digital-inclusion-as-SDoH-Nature-PNG-e1625483289474.png)
Without access to connectivity during the pandemic, too many people could not work for their living, attend school and learn, connect with loved ones, or get health care. The COVID-19 era has shined a bright light on what some of us have been saying since the advent of the Internet’s emergence in health care: that digital literacies and connectivity are “super social determinants of health” because they underpin other social determinants of health, discussed in Digital inclusion as a social determinant of health, published in Nature’s npj Digital Medicine. On the downside, lack of access to digital tools and literacies
The Healthiest Communities in the U.S. After the Pandemic – U.S. News & Aetna Foundation’s Post-COVID Lists
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/US-News-2021-Healthiest-banner-logo.png)
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
Reimagining Life After the Pandemic – Seeking Health, Safety, Sustainability, and Trust
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Accenture-life-reimagined-the-new-motivators-health-and-safety-personal-care-trust.png)
COVID-19 reshaped people around the world, one-half of whom are re-defining their personal purpose and life-goals. This sense of purpose extends to peoples’ willingness to buy or patronize companies who do not meet their needs for health, safety, sustainability and trust. For example, two in three of these people would switch travel brands if they felt health and safety weren’t up to par, discovered in Life Reimagined – Mapping the motivations that matter for today’s consumers, from Accenture’s Voices of Change series. In May 2021, Accenture polled over 25,000 consumers globally, in 22 countries, and found that one-half of people
Color Me Healthy – Pantone’s Forecast on Post-Pandemic Well-Being and Design
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Pantone-Newtopia-The-New-Healthy-e1624638194370.png)
Post-pandemic, the consumer’s priority purchases are grocery, nesting, and health, according to David Shah, a leading thinker about social and design trends. David presented the latest Pantone forecast on color and society in NewTopia – A Balance of Color Opposites – Color for a Post-COVID World this week. I had the opportunity to attend the session, and want to share the health and wellness-related insights David shared in his fast-paced view on the role of color in bolstering wellbeing and community looking out to 2022/23. For context, Pantone plays a role in your life you might not realize. In health
5.5 Million Years of Life Will Be Lost Due to COVID-19 in the U.S. in 2020
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Pew-CDC-COVID-19-lost-years-e1624311182151.png)
In 2020 in the U.S., 380,000 people are expected to die due to COVID-19. These people lost due to the coronavirus would, collectively, have lived another 5.5 million life-years would they not have succumbed to the virus. COVID-19 has cut lives short relative to their life expectancy, calculated in an analysis by the Pew Research Center based on CDC data from 2019 and 2020, coupled with additional statistics on life expectancy by age and gender. The bottom-line from the Pew Research Center’s analysis, simply stated, is that, “The pandemic…has killed many Americans who otherwise might have expected to live for
The Stress of the Caregiver: The Most Over-Utilized, Unpaid Stakeholder in U.S. Healthcare
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/NEJM-Caregiver-cover.png)
We’ve long know that “the patient” has been an under-utilized resource in the U.S. healthcare system since Dr. Charles Safran testified with that statement to Congress way back in 2004…an era where bipartisanship for health IT was a real thing. Today, with the insights of Alexandra Drane (Founder of ARCHANGELS) and Dr. Nirav Shah (of Stanford University), we know that caregivers are among the most over-utilized resources in the U.S. healthcare system — overused, over-stressed, under-paid, detailed n How Health Systems Can Care for Caregivers, published in the NEJM Catalyst July 2021 issue. In this study, Drane and Shah analyze
The Digital Home: A Platform for Health, via Deloitte and the COVID-19 “Stress Test”
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Deloitte-COnnectivity-2021-the-doctor-will-see-you-now-June.png)
Wherever you live in the world touched by the coronavirus pandemic, you felt (and were) stress-tested. Both you were, and your home was as well. In this year’s 2021 annual report by Deloitte into Connectivity & Mobile Trends, their report details How the pandemic has stress-tested the crowded digital home. This analysis was done, as it is every year, by the Deloitte Center for Technology, Media & Telecommunications. Deloitte’s Center commissioned an online survey among 2,009 U.S. consumers to gauge five generations of peoples’ perspectives on connected life in the context of COVID. The report covers the various life-flows of
Post-Pandemic, U.S. Healthcare is Entering a “Provide More Care For Less” Era – Pondering PwC’s 2022 Forecast
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/PwC-2021-cover-page-e1623174126929.png)
In the COVID-19 pandemic, health care spending in the U.S. increased by a relatively low 6.0% in 2020. This year, medical cost trend will rise by 7.0%, expected to decline a bit in 2022 according to the annual study from PwC Health Research Institute, Medical Cost Trend: Behind the Numbers 2022. What’s “behind these numbers” are factors that will increase medical spending (the “inflators” in PwC speak) and the “deflators” that lower costs. Looking around the future corner, the inflators are expected to be: A COVID-19 “hangover,” leading to increased health care services utilization Preparations for the next pandemic, and
The ROI on Virtual Care – Thinking About Value and Future Prospects With the AMA
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AMA-ROI-framework-for-value-digital-care-e1621979770652.png)
When a new technology or product starts to get used in a market, it follows a diffusion curve whose slope depends on the pace of adoption in that market. For telehealth, that S-curve has had a very long and fairly flat front-end of the “S” followed by a hockey stick trajectory in March and April 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was an exogenous shock to in-person health care delivery. The first chart from the CDC illustrates that dramatic growth in the use of telehealth ratcheting up since the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in the U.S. Virtual care has
Americans’ Views on Food Have Been Re-Shaped by the Pandemic: Think Security, Immunity, and Sustainability
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IFIC-food-and-health-survey-cover-page-e1621366670199.png)
As vaccinations jabbed into peoples’ arms in the U.S. continue to immunize health citizens from contracting the coronavirus, millions of folks are looking forward to getting back inside restaurants to enjoy meals out, as well as un-masking when grocery shopping. But people in the U.S. love their food both outside and inside the home: about one-half of people in the U.S. are continuing to cook at home more, according to the 2021 Food & Health Survey published today by the International Food Information Council (IFIC). This sixteenth annual report is a go-to for those of us in the health/care ecosystem who
Nurses Hacking for Health and Compassionomics
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/NH4H-billboard-want-to-find-innovative-ways-to-access-care-orange-e1621254101815.png)
The hearts and minds of nurses are fertile and inspirational sources and engines for health care innovation. This past weekend, and for the second time, I had the privilege and opportunity to be a panelist for the perennial hackathon meet-up of Nurse Hack 4 Health, sponsored by Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Sonsiel, and DevUp. This round, the hackathon attracted hundreds of nurses from at least 20 countries and 30 U.S. states. Even a few students attended, a growing trend as academia recognizes the shortage of workers trained to solve thorny problems of the world. In health care, right here, right
Thinking Mothers’ Health at Mother’s Day 2021…and the Marshall Plan for Moms
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Marshall_Plan_For_Moms___IMAGE-e1620405848658.jpg)
To all the Moms I’ve loved and lost and those I still blessed to have in my life…. I’m thinking about our collective and individual health this 2021 Mother’s Day weekend. There are three themes that whirl in the current Moms’ Health Mix: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mothers’ health and life Mom-economics and the She-Cession — the financial roots of health inequity, and The larger context that is the persistence of women’s health disparities. First, the impact of the coronavirus and the economy have been intertwined, hitting women hard in terms of physical health, work, mental health
Consumers’ Health Concerns Grow in the Pandemic Across All Categories – And More Trust Virtual Care
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Euromonitor-and-COVID-health-concerns-jump-overall-categories-eye-to-allergy-1-e1620068300382.png)
While the “in-person” visit to a doctor or medical professional continues to rank first as consumers’ most-trusted information source, the virtual doc or clinician rose in trust during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Euromonitor’s latest read on Consumer Health: Changes in Consumer Behaviour during COVID-19 . The first four most-trusted sources for health information in 2021 remained the same short-list from 2020: doctors in-person, pharmacists, nutritionists and dieticians, and government or NGOs. But fifth place slipped from family and friends to the pharma industry, and sixth in line went to virtual doctors or medical professionals rising from 9th place in
And the Oscar Goes To….Power to the Patients!
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Power-to-the-Patients-oscars.png)
Health care has increased its role in popular culture over the years. In movies in particular, we’ve seen health care costs and hassles play featured in plotlines in As Good as it Gets [theme: health insurance coverage], M*A*S*H [war and its medical impacts are hell], and Philadelphia [HIV/AIDS in the era of The Band Played On], among dozens of others. And this year’s Oscar winner for leading actor, Anthony Hopkins, played The Father, who with his family is dealing with dementia. [The film, by the way, garnered six nominations and won two]. When I say “Oscar” here on the Health
Health Disparities and the Risks of Social Determinants for COVID-19 – 14 Months of Evidence
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ASPE-SDoH-death-rates-per-100K-by-race-e1619539777862.png)
In April 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued a report featuring evidence that in the month of March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic was not an equal-opportunity killer. Within just a couple of months of COVID-19 emerging in America, it became clear that health disparities were evident in outcomes due to complications from the coronavirus. An update from that early look at differences in COVID-19 diagnoses and mortality rates was published in Health Disparities by Race and Ethnicity During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Current Evidence and Policy Approaches, In this report, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, part of
Virtual Health Tech Enables the Continuum of Health from Hospital to Home
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Triple-Tree-virtual-health-ecosystem-e1618955960912.png)
In the COVID-19 pandemic, as peoples’ daily lives shifted closer and closer to home, and for some weeks and months home-all-the-time, health care, too, moved beyond brick-and-mortar hospitals and doctors’ offices. The public health crisis accelerated “what’s next” for health care delivery, detailed in A New Era of Virtual Health, a report published by TripleTree. TripleTree is an investment bank that has advised health care transactions since 1997. As such, the team has been involved in digital health financing and innovation for 24 years, well before the kind of platforms, APIs, and cloud computing now enabling telehealth and care, everywhere. The
Health, the Great Unifier (For Most)
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/HealthLine-Media-in-health-we-trust-cover-graphic.png)
As the COVID-19 expanded peoples’ consciousness about infectious disease and opportunities to keep a tricky virus at bay, consumers grew new muscles about public and individual wellness…now, “more invested in achieving it,” according to In Health We Trust, a survey report from Healthline Media. To gauge Americans changing perspectives on personal health, HealthLine conducted surveys among 1,533 U.S. consumers age 18 and over in February 2020 (just about the time the coronavirus pandemic was emerging in the U.S.) and 1,577 consumers in December 2020. One of the subtle shifts in health care consumerism concerns cost, which before the pandemic has
The Post-COVID 19 Health Consumer: Ready for DIY Health Care and More Open to Telehealth
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/PwC-COVID19-consumer-DIY-care-by-type.png)
The COVID-19 pandemic has re-shaped consumers for work, school, fitness, cooking, and certainly for health care. PwC’s Health Research Institute has combed through their consumer survey data and developed insights on health consumers, shared in a summary titled Consumer health behavior and the COVID-19 pandemic: What we’ve learned. Most U.S. consumers would be likely to have a clinician visit their homes for several kinds of medical care, including: “DIY care,” as PwC exemplifies as a home strep or flu test, or remote monitoring, likely among 85% of people A chronic care visit, likely for 78% of consumers A visit for
The Pandemic’s Death Rate in the U.S.: High Per Capita Income, High Mortality
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/World-Bank-IMF-mtg-death-rate-US-vs-other-countries-with-PC-income-PPPP-basis-e1617998807700.png)
The United States has among the highest per capita incomes in the world. The U.S. also has sustained among the highest death rates per 100,000 people due to COVID-19, based on epidemiological data from the World Health Organization’s March 28, 2021, update. Higher incomes won’t prevent a person from death-by-coronavirus, but risks for the social determinants of health — exacerbated by income inequality — will and do. I have the good fortune of access to a study group paper shared by Paul Sheard, Research Fellow at the Mossaver-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. In reviewing
Emerging with A Stronger Healthcare System Post-COVID: NAM’s Lessons Learned
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/NAM-C19-paper-health-system-functions-during-C19-e1617888972724.png)
The coronavirus pandemic exposed weaknesses in the U.S. health care system that existed before the public health crisis. What lessons can be learned from the COVID-19 stress-test to build American health care back better? The National Academy of Medicine is publishing nine reports addressing health stakeholder segments impacted and re-shaped by COVID-19 — for public health, quality and safety, health care payers, clinicians, research, patients-families-communities, health product manufacturers, digital health, and care systems. The report on health care systems and providers was released this week: COVID-19 Impact Assessment: Lessons Learned and Compelling Needs was authored by experts on the front-line
Housing as Prescription for Health/Care – in Medecision Liberation
![](https://www.healthpopuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/UK-PHS-housing-not-just-dwelling-place.png)
COVID-19 ushered in the era of our homes as safe havens for work, shopping, education, fitness-awaking, bread-baking, and health-making. In my latest essay written for Medecision, I weave together new and important data and evidence supporting the basic social determinant of health — shelter, housing, home — and some innovations supporting housing-as-medicine from CVS Health, UnitedHealth Group, AHIP, Brookings Institution, the Urban Land Institute, and other stakeholders learning how housing underpins our health — physical, mental, financial. Read about a wonderful development from Communidad Partners, working with the Veritas Impact Partners group, channeling telehealth to housing programs serving residents with