A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

  Most people like government policies targeting reducing tobacco use, requiring food manufacturers and restaurants to reduce salt content, and mandating schools to require 45 minutes of daily activity for students. A large majority of Americans (at least 8 in 10 people) support government actions to promote public health that stem chronic disease, from preventing cancer (89%) and heart disease (86%) to helping people control their diabetes (84%) and preventing childhood obesity (81%). A Survey Finds Public Support For Legal Interventions Directed At Health Behavior To Fight Noncommunicable Disease (NCD). This poll, published in the March 2013 issue of Health Affairs, profiles the

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

It’s America Saves Week (February 25-March 2, 2013). Do you know what your savings rate is? If you’re in the center of the American savings bell curve, you probably don’t have a savings plan with specific goals and don’t know your net worth. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say they have sufficient emergency savings for unexpected expenses like a visit to a doctor. However, only one-half of non-retired people believe they’re saving enough for a retirement where they’ll have a “desirable standard of living.” This six annual survey by the Consumer Federation of America, the American Savings Education Council, and the

The restaurant chain business employs 10% of U.S. workers and accounts for $660 bn worth of the national economy. Where restaurant chains are growing fastest is in serving up lower-calorie meals, and it’s been a boon to the bottom-line. The case for lower calories leading to better business is made in Lower-Calorie Foods: It’s Just Good Business from the Hudson Institute‘s Obesity Solutions Initiative, published February 2013. In the report, researchers analyzed nitty-gritty restaurant chain data on servings and traffic from 2006-2011 to sort out whether sales of so-called lower-calorie menu items in 21 chains led to improved business. The chains

In the U.S., we’ll be the #1 oil producer by 2020. We’re the largest national economy in the world (to be surpassed by China before 2030). And, we’re #1 in terms of the lowest taxes paid as a percentage of national GDP. That’s all heartening news for the time being. But we’re also #1 in what I’ll call “un-health:” in auto accident mortality for adolescents, obesity rates, infant mortality, prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, and among other public health metrics. A report from the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (NRC/IOM) calls out what JAMA terms The US Health Disadvantage:

Health and wellness motivations among women cross all generations, driving them to purchase products that bolster health as they define it…not how media and stereotyping advertising have typically portrayed it, according to a survey report from Anthem Worldwide, What Women Really Want From Health and Wellness. Over all generations, 3 in 4 women say they make choices to benefit their health and wellness. Anthem asked women about the “external voices” of health/wellness messaging versus their “internal voice.” The external represent societal expectations: over 80% of women expect to take responsibility for their family’s health, and about 70% of women say the

Most of us keep track of some aspect of our health. Half of all people who track do so “in their heads,” not on paper, Excel spreadsheet, or via digital platform. Furthermore, 36% update their health tracking data at least once a day; but 16% update at most twice a month, and 9% update less than once monthly. Tracking for Health from the Pew Internet & American Life Project paints a portrait of U.S. adults who, on one hand are quantifying themselves but largely aren’t taking advantage of automated and convenient ways of doing so. Overall, 69% of U.S. adults track

On this day celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr., I post a photo of him in Detroit in 1963, giving a preliminary version of his “I Have a Dream” speech he would give two months later in Washington, DC. As I meditate on MLK, I think about health equity. By now, most rational Americans know the score on the nation’s collective health status compared to other developed countries: suffice it to say, We’re Not #1. But underneath that statistic is a further sad state of health affairs: that people of color in the U.S. have lower quality of health than white

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

85% of U.S. health consumers say that emails, text messages, and voicemails are at least as helpful as in-person or phone conversations with health providers, according to the TeleVox Healthy World study, Technology Beyond the Exam Room. The study was based on surveys conducted with over 2,200 health providers across specialties, and 1,015 U.S. adults over 18. Furthermore, one in 3 consumers admit to being more honest when talking about medical needs via automated voice response systems, emails or texts than face-to-face with a health provider. And 3 in 10 consumers believe that receiving digital health communications from providers such

  Nurses, pharmacists and doctors rank tops with Americans when it comes to honesty and ethics. Most people also rate engineers, dentists, police officers, clergy and college teachers as high on honesty metrics. Lawmakers (THINK: Congress) and car salesman fall to the bottom of the honesty-and-trust roster, who only 1 in 10 Americans believe act with honesty and integrity. Other low-ranking professions on this list are HMO managers, stockbrokers, and folks in the advertising business. Welcome to this year’s Gallup Poll on consumers’ perceptions of honesty and ethics in 22 professions in the U.S. Gallup measures six health care professions

83% of consumers would pay more for a product or service from a company they feel puts them first, finds rbb Public Relations in their 2012 Nationwide Breakout Brand Survey. Emotional connections matter most in health care, say 76% of U.S. consumers, followed by banks (63%), professional services (62% – think: accountant, financial planner, estate lawyer), travel (56%), insurance (55%) and autos (52%). Interestingly, apparel and beauty rank the lowest in the poll – with only 18% and 19% of consumers looking for emotional connections from those industries. The top 10 breakout brands on the emotional front are Apple Amazon

A teddy bear in the arms of a child with diabetes can change health care. At least, Jerry the Bear can. Yesterday kicked off the sixth autumn mega-version of the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. Co-founded by Matthew Holt and Indu Subaiya, a long-time health analyst and physician, respectively, this meeting features new-new tools, apps and devices aimed at improving individual and population health, as well as health processes and workflows for physicians, hospitals, pharma, and other stakeholders in the health care ecosystem – even health lawyers, who met on October 7 to discuss up-to-the-minute  e-health law issues. Yesterday was

I spotted this sign yesterday at my local Wegmans, the family-owned grocery chain founded in upstate NY and growing down the northeast corridor of the U.S. Many months ago, a similar sign promoted “free antibiotics” at the store. What does a grocery chain’s pharmacy doling out “Free” [asterisked] generic Lipitor mean to the larger health ecosystem? On the upside, health is where we live, work, play and pray, as Dr. Regina Benjamin, the Surgeon General, has said. This has become a mantra for us at THINK-Health, and regular Health Populi readers may be tiring of my repeated use of this

Target, the beloved retail channel for many design-minded value-conscious consumers, has opted in to mobile health through its purchase of SMARTCOACH mobile health coaching devices. SMARTCOACH is part of a growing category of wearable devices that monitor health behaviors like walking and calories consumed. What differentiates SMARTCOACH is the “coach” element, which provides real-time feedback throughout the day. Most other devices in the market simply track and record data. And it’s feedback loops that more experts say are key to sustaining health behavior change. Target will bring the device into stores for purchase in the fall. Like some other wearable

Calling Don Draper, Donny Deutsch, and the spirit of David Ogilvy: the President needs you. The President must sell the Affordable Care Act to the American people now that Justice Roberts wrote the Supreme Court’s historic 5-4 majority opinion supporting the Act, and especially the individual mandate. He argued for the majority that while the mandate is unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause which would “command people to buy insurance,” he said that the mandate is a de facto tax, as people who would choose to opt out of insurance would have an alternative of paying an IRS fine. Senator Eric

The antidepressant market is worth $20 billion in the U.S. Antidepressants were the third most common prescription drug taken by Americans of all ages in 2005-2008 and the most frequently used by people age 18-44 (according to the National Center for Health Statistics). About one in 10 Americans age 12 and over takes an antidepressant medication. But there is little evidence that pharmacotherapy should be used as a first line of treatment for mild to moderate depression. Why are anti-depressants the first line of treatment for mild to moderate depression in the U.S.? The answer lies in the fact that

Skype and videoconferencing have surpassed the tipping point of consumer adoption. Grandparents Skype with grandchildren living far, far away. Soldiers converse daily with families from Afghanistan and Iraq war theatres. Workers streamline telecommuting by videoconferencing with colleagues in geographically distributed offices. In the era of DIY’ing all aspects of life, more health citizens are taking to DIY’ing health — and, increasingly, looking beyond physical health for convenient access to mental and behavioral health services. The Online Couch: Mental Health Care on the Web is my latest paper for the California HealthCare Foundation. Among a range of emerging tech-enabled mental health

Mom is the Chief Health Officer of her family, she’s mobile, and seeking health information and community on-the-go. But underneath the persona of the Mobile Mom, she’s consuming information and sharing perspectives on many other ‘screens,’ too. And that’s the challenge for marketers seeking to grab the attention of this key player in the health ecosystem. There are new survey data from Enspektos‘s report, Digging Beneath the Surface: Understanding the Digital Health Mom, that are must-reading for health industry stakeholders who seek to motivate health behaviors among women, who are at once nurturing wellness, caregiving for sick people, and sharing

As I leave Asia, where I’ve been for the past two weeks, for the U.S. today, I am reading the daily newspaper, the Korea Joongang News. On today’s op-Ed age is The Fountain column titled, Embracing the do-it-yourself attitude. In it, Lee Na-ree writes, “Making something with your own hands is part of the American pioneer spirit.” He describes the Maker Faire events and the project of Caine’s Arcade, a game developed by a Los Angeles boy who used auto parts from his dad’s shop. Na-ree observes that Americans are ‘regretting’ mass consumption. Health Populi’s Hot Points: I happened upon

Highmark is the next health plan to launch mobile health programs, signalling a tipping point in health insurance companies getting up-close-and-personal with members’ wellness. Encouraging Words of Wisdom is a personal nutrition coaching program for plan enrollees who meet with dieticians. Members can opt-in to receive motivational text messages and support ongoing commitments to healthy eating. One such message reads, “The best food comes in its own package.” Another app enables members to find a doctor using GPS or to calculate their co-pay amount for a service. Highmark’s head of health services strategy said in the company’s press release, “We understand

U.S. health consumers’ purchase and use of over-the-counter medicines (OTCs) generate $102 billion worth of value to the health system every year. Half of this value accrues to employers who sponsor health insurance for their workforce; 25% goes to government payers (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid); and, 25% returns to self-insured and uninsured people. For every $1 spent on OTCs, $6.50 is saved by the U.S. health system, shown by the chart. For millions of health consumers, OTCs substitute for a visit to a doctor’s office: most cost-savings generated by OTC use are in saved costs of not visiting a clinician, as discussed

Less is more when it comes to health care utilization and outcomes. The U.S. allocates too many resources to a huge line item of waste in the health system – administrative (in terms of too many paper processes and staff to deal with them) and clinically (especially involving duplicated tests and ineffective treatments that aren’t based on evidence based medicine). “Take less” is the tagline of the company called help which is found at the URL http://www.helpineedhelp.com/.  This is a consumer-facing over-the-counter drug supplier. Their product line counts 7 mature products each packaged with the health complaint they target: “Help,” I have

When I would meet up with clients and friends during the latter half of 2011, people whom I hadn’t seen for months would do a double-take when they saw me. “What have you done?” they have asked. In this first post of 2012, I will share with Health Populi readers my story of 2011 — a year of living health-fully for me. One of the blessings of my work-life is that I have access to some of the great minds in health and health care. But not until I began to personally harness their wisdom, intentionally incorporating what they’ve learned into my own life-flow and

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

Health philanthropies are about more than making grants. The Robert Wood Johnson Association, among the largest health philanthropic organizations in the world, is partnering with the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed) on how community development impacts health — and vice versa. You cannot have a healthy community without focusing on housing, schools, and other neighborhood stakeholders, Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey told the conference on Healthy Communities: Building Systems to Integrate Community Development and Health. In this context, Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey quoted Robert Kennedy who said, “The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or

A picture’s not only worth the proverbial thousand words, but can save a life. So can a t-shirt…er, TeachShirt. At the Unniched meeting held on 25 October 2011 in NYC, I spent a few minutes talking with two members of Zemoga‘s brain trust: Sven Larsen, Chief Marketing Office, and the firm’s Principal Design guru, Dan Licht. We discussed how design is so critical a factor in health, and in life — particularly, in DIY health, where we are all taking on more responsibility for our own health care — clinical, financial, mental, social. Among Zemoga’s colorful and uber-creative portfolio is its concept, the

Two publications this week reinforce the new reality of health and financial insecurity: The Vanishing Middle America issue of Advertising Age (October 17, 2011 issue) and the Sun Life Financial U.S. Unretirement Index – Fall 2011 with the subtitle, “Americans’ trust in retirement reaches a tipping point.” The chart shows the retirement coin’s two sides: since 2008, the proportion of people in the U.S. who expect to retire by 67 dropped from 52% down to 35%; and, those who believe they will be working full-time (I emphasize “full,” not “part,” time) grew from 19% to 29%. 61% of working Americans plan to

While women may equally ‘value’ healthy aging in the long-run, it’s their daily quality of life that may motivate them to stick with exercise routines. Simply put, immediate payoffs are more motivating to sustaining behavior change than the long-term promise of “health.” In Rebranding exercise: closing the gap between values and behavior, Michelle Segar and colleagues from the University of Michigan (disclosure: my beloved alma mater) describe the state of women and chronic illness, and the difficulty in sustaining physical activity especially in middle age. “While a number of interventions can help individuals successfully initiate an exercise program, most interventions have failed

In an interview in March 2011 with the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Regina Benjamin, the U.S. Surgeon General, said, “We can’t look at health in isolation. It’s not just in the doctor’s office. It’s got to be where we live, we work, we play, we pray. If you have a healthy community, you have a healthy individual.” Ford’s announcement last week that the automaker would team up with WellDoc to incorporate mobile health sensors into the company’s SYNC connectivity system  follows Toyota’s mhealth concept, the RiN, launched in 2007. Among various applications envisioned at this preliminary stage: Glucose monitors, from Medtronic, will

In the “House & Home” section of last weekend’s Financial Times, an article titled ‘Domestic Science’ talked about internet-operated vacuum cleaners that feed pets, refrigerators that track emptying cartons of milk, and the $10 Savant TruControl iPad app that helps control home systems’ remotely (tied to a $6,000 home-based system). The article also touched on the Withings WiFi body scale. The Withings scale communicates wirelessly to a computer or mobile phone, transferring and automatically recording the user’s weight, BMI, body fat percentage and other parameters to a secure, password-protected online system. The user can choose to tweet their weight via Twitter if they choose

As we are in the midst of the Hype Cycle for mHealth, the answer to the question, Health – is there really an app for that? has a loaded answer. This will be evident during the panel on which I’m participating on Sunday 3/13/11, the first full day of health hosted as part of the legendary South by Southwest conference. I am absolutely gob-smacked thrilled to be sharing the stage with John DeSouza, President and CEO of MedHelp; BJ Fogg of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab; and, Margie Morris, clinical psychologist and senior researcher at Intel Labs. We’ll be shepherded by Gigi Peterkin of Edelman, who

EURO RSCG has polled 1,000 online Americans’ views on romance through the lens of digital media, publishing results in a paper, Love (and Sex) in the Age of Social Media. This ‘digital love’ survey was conducted in January 2011.  [It’s interesting to note that EURO RSCG won the business for the Durex condom line in November 2010.] In its introduction, EURO RSCG suggests that, “the Internet is the most powerful erogenous zone that the world has ever known.” There are five aspects to digital love, based on these findings: 1. Observing love online. As more people do more daily activities online like banking,

Target, fondly known as “Tar-zhay“ in my home, won the Design of the Decade award from the Industrial Designers Society of America for the innovation called ClearRx — a pill bottle. While a pill bottle might seem to be a commoditized sort of item, this bottle was designed to prevent medication mistakes committed by patients who take maintenance medications for chronic conditions. The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCCMERP) defines medication errors as preventable events that can cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in hands of patients or providers. The Institute of Medicine estimated that

Americans trust their supermarkets and local hospitals more than other industries they deal with. while tobacco and oil companies remain at the bottom of the trust-list for U.S. consumers, health insurance and managed care aren’t much ahead of them. Pharmaceutical companies rank fairly low, with only 11% of U.S. adults seeing them as “honest and trustworthy.” As a result, nearly one-half of Americans would like to see increased regulation on pharma. Over 1 in 3 Americans would like to see managed care and health insurance companies more regulated. The latest Harris Poll has found that oil, pharmaceutical, health insurance and tobacco are

In the wake of last week’s mHealth Summit in Washington, DC, there’s yet another bullish forecast on mobile health to consider. The Promise of Mobile Health asks the tagline question: “Bigger than DTC?” Euro RSCG’s Life 4D group, published the paper in November 2010. Survey data in the report followed up its October 2009 digital health survey in September 2010 among 502 American adults. Euro RSCG rightly points out that consumers’ health needs are 24×7: “they take their healthcare needs with them.” The firm believes that the biggest barrier to wider consumer adoption of mobile health is the low penetration of “suitable mobile devices among consumers.” The report’s survey

The oracle (and I use the word here in the classic sense) of health internet statistics, Susannah Fox (@susannahfox on Twitter), along with the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the California HealthCare Foundation, find that 17% of mobile phone users look up health information online — and nearly 1 in 3 young adults 18-29 do so, while between 5-6% of people 50 and seek health information via mobile. The Mobile Health 2010 report tells the story. Beneath these macro statistics are the ones shown in the chart: people who have used cell phones to look up health information, which is a larger base

8 in 10 people want companies to help them make changes to their own behavior, including getting more physical activity, eating healthier, and reducing their impact on the environment, according to the 2010 Cone Cause Evolution Study. Even more moms — 9 in 10 — are looking for this kind of support from companies with which they do business. Health is top-of-mind when it comes to cause marketing. 8 in 10 people think that companies should support health and disease. Cone’s study shows that cause marketing hasn’t just gone mainstream: it’s been absorbed into shoppers’ consciousness and figures into personal spending

Detractors of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC) contend that the ads promote consumers asking for pills they don’t often need, medicalize normal life conditions (such as menopause and sleeplessness), and drive up unnecessary medical spending. A team of researchers now finds that DTC can play an important, positive role in motivating health consumers to adopt healthy behaviors. “The intention to engage in healthy lifestyles was strengthened by exposure to familial risk cues in DTC ads and this effect was mediated through enhanced efficacy to take healthy actions,” the paper concludes. Familial risk cues engendered positive self-efficacy. This is the first empirical study that

Call them “kinder, gentler,” gamers, according to ComScore: women like gaming as much as men do, but the kinds of games they like are different from their male peers. I wrote about ComScore‘s report, Women on the Web: How Women Are Shaping the Internet, on July 30 2010. The post was titled, Women Are the Digital Mainstream, Especially in Health. The report includes detailed survey data on women’s use of games. The chart here illustrates the Mars vs. Venus differences in tastes for online games: men prefer action, adventure and sports, along with education. Women like online puzzles, card games, trivia,

1 in 2 Americans are purchasing more generic brands, and 2 in 3 are brown-bagging lunch, according to a HarrisInteractive survey into consumers’ buying patterns 30 months into the recession. Titled, Americans Still Cutting Back on the Little Things to Save Money, Harris’s poll discovered that U.S. consumers are making a lot of micro-changes on a daily basis to deal with the economic downturn. Besides migrating toward generic products and away from branded ones, and not buying as many lunches out, they’re switching to refillable water bottles, using the hairdresser and barber less, cancelling media subscriptions (including magazines, newspapers and cable TV), and

Two weeks ago, I bought a package containing 100 caplets of Tylenol PM caplets from my grocery store’s pharmacy aisle. I checked the lot number marked on the box against the list on the McNeil consumer healthcare website, and my lot appears to be fine. Today, Avandia, the prescription drug that treats diabetes, hit the headlines of the world’s major newspapers: Avandia Panel Hints At Doubts of Credibility, says the New York Times Avandia Hearings To Reveal True Dangers of Popular Drug, according to FOXNews GlaxoSmithKline Hid Negative Avandia Data: Lawmakers, reads ABC News Glaxo to Pay $460 million in Avandia Settlement, notes Reuters. And there’s also

What do Dora the Explorer, Scooby-Doo and Shrek have in common? They’re persuading kids to eat less nutritious food, according to a study in the July 2010 Pediatrics journal (Volume 126. Number 1). A team from The Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity studied children’s taste for food that’s sold in cartoon-character themed packages, versus products in plain packaging. The verdict? Kids think the cartoon-themed food tastes better.  The study was done among 40 so-called “ethnically diverse” children 4-6 years old in New Haven, CT, preschools. Health Populi’s Hot Points: Since Vance Packard wrote the seminal book on advertising, The Hidden

Good luck to stakeholders in navigating the health-regulatory labyrinth once health reform is implementing in the U.S. A report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) predicts, “A number of existing regulators will also have expanded roles as a result of the legislation.” These will be in addition to the new regulators identified by the law, which include but won’t be limited to: CMS Innovation Center Independent Payment Advisory Board Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council Task Forces on Preventive Services and Community Preventive Services Community-based Collaborative Care Network Program Community Living Assistance

70,000 young Americans between 15 and 39 years of age are diagnosed with cancer every year. This population falls in a gap between pediatric and adult cancer. Newly-diagnosed young adults often find themselves in a no-patients’-land, confronting a lack of targeted clinical trials and knowledgeable clinicians in local health markets.The National Cancer Institute says that survival rates for this group of cancer patients haven’t improved in over 30 years.That’s definitely cause to flip cancer the bird, and that’s exactly what the young actor, Zac Efron, has done.Efron is photographed with a young cancer patient, Emily Hobson, to focus on Stupid

Who do you trust the most in America? Nurses, pharmacists, doctors, and police officers. Who’s least trusted? Elected officials in Congress, car salesmen, stockbrockers, and…HMO managers. Gallup‘s annual Honesty and Ethics of Professions poll is out and finds that health providers and front-line health workers rank highest in the nation. Nearly 9 in 10 Americans say nurses have the highest integrity, followed by 2 in 3 Americans ranking pharmacists and doctors as high or very high. Integrity grades aren’t so high, though, for chiropractors and psychiatrists, ranked very high or high in ethics among 34% and 33% of Americans, respectively.

New Yorkers who frequent Au Bon Pain, KFC, McDonald’s and Starbucks who noticed calorie counts on menu labels ordered 106 fewer calories at the point-of-purchase than people who didn’t pay attention to the information.   Here’s evidence that labeling in fast-food destinations works.   At the annual meeting of the Obesity Society in Washington DC this week, researchers are presenting results on how transparency of calorie information motivates many health citizens to change their choices based on nutritional knowledge.   Reuters reports some details from the study. Researchers in New York polled 10,000 diners at 275 locations of the most

Having grown up outside of Detroit, Berry Gordy and Hitsville, U.S.A., aka Motown Records, plays the core beat in the soundtrack of my younger life, and still to this day. The Jackson 5’s hits are woven into that musical quilt, and Michael Jackson’s work with Quincy Jones even more: in particular, Off the Wall and Thriller.   This brilliant force in our lives had much to teach us in life: Be a lifelong learner, and grow every day in your craft – whatever that might be. Reach beyond your grasp. Delight in what you do for a living. Give to