A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

The rate of vaccinations among people 65 years of age and older has declined since 2019 — a personal health challenge for aging Americans and their caregivers and families, and a public health problem for the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics published Data Brief 547 on the situation on January 21, 2026. In the meantime, serendipity and timing are uncanny in the moment as The Value of Vaccines conversation series from Pfizer was launched this week. I am grateful to have participated in this project with several sisters-in-expertise: Elif Alyanak from Avalere, Venesa Day

Most Americans believe it’s very important for the nation to lead in scientific achievements. But twice as many Democrats as Republications, 65% versus 32%, say the U.S. is losing ground in science innovations. The Pew Research Center asks and answers the Do Americans Think the Country Is Losing or Gaining Ground in Science? And the answer is, “millions of people do think so.” The Pew team polled 5,111 U.S. adults in late October 2025 for this research.                 There are a few political chasms related to science-trust in the U.S. that are important

While nurses continue to rank high for honesty and ethics, Americans’ trust in the nations’ professions is tanking, found in this year’s Gallup Poll update titled, Nurses Continue to Lead in Honesty and Ethics Ratings.           Nurses perennially top this chart, usually followed by doctors and pharmacists. But this year, it’s military veterans who garner the second spot in the Gallup Poll, with doctors and pharmacists in positions 3 and 4. Ranking at the bottom as least-respected for honesty and ethics are Members of Congress, again garnering the low-point in this study, with telemarketers trailing the

Increasingly, people are engaging more in health care decision making due to many factors impacting their personal medical choices — from the cost and access to health insurance to co-payments for prescription drugs and the supply of primary care doctors, more patients developed and exercised their health consumer muscles in 2025, For 2026, the health consumer muscle-building will grow as people will be re-shaped by macro market factors we are currently gleaning from forecasts looking into the new year: for personal finances, social issues, technology adoption, views on AI and privacy, and other issues. Here are some data points to

Trust is a key enabler for people’s health engagement. As the American Medical Colleges’ Center for Health Justice defines it, trustworthiness is “rooted in honesty and honors lived experience….. key to a successful patient-provider partnership.” In his book, Notes On Being A Man, Scott Galloway calls out that men’s fertility issues are formed as part of a larger societal context and crisis point, exacerbated by economic pressures and lack of opportunities for male bonding and in-person social touchpoints. In the second post in this series of three, we discussed those economic pressures Galloway notes, and the financial stressors that shape

In his latest book, Notes on Being a Man, Scott Galloway discusses his personal fertility journey in the larger social context of what it means to be a man in modern America. Galloway’s infertility challenges shared with his wife inform his views on men’s health across all dimensions — physical, mental health, social health, financial well-being — and how, of course, men’s overall health is also a women’s and children’s issue. Men can feel “left out” of infertility discussions, based on results from the first and largest multi-national study into men’s feelings about their infertility revealed. “How men feel about

In 2023, more than one-half of male deaths in the U.S. were premature: this is The Real Face of Men’s Health in America, a new report analyzing 2025 U.S. data from the Movember Foundation. The report was published as we approach November which the project chose for Men’s Health Month when launching in Australia over 20 years ago.                Compared with the rest of the economically-developed world, Movember found that the “U.S. stands out for the sheer number of years of life lost (YLL), as well as the enormous toll of men’s early deaths

“From Pod to Pantone: Omnipod Mango becomes an iconic color,” the Insulet press release reads.  How delighted I am to see that Insulet has collaborated with Pantone on developing the Omnipod Mango color for the company’s insulin delivery system. Here’s some of the story. So why “Mango?” To celebrate individualism and empowerment…and break away from “the world of traditional blues that dominate the medical and diabetes landscapes.” Instead….a bright tropical orange instead of the “medical blues,” as the color researchers pointed out.             How wonderful is this? Uplifting, joyful, and representative of the Podders community and identity.

In the current era of U.S. health citizen grievance with the health care system, people feel anxious, confused, and angry — especially when it comes to access and affordability of health care. We learn more about these emotional drivers of health/care grievance in Understanding Health Plan Member Discontent, an assessment of health consumers’ views of satisfaction across health insurance plan types (commercial, Medicaid, Medicare, and marketplace plans) and age of member, from the health consumer experience team at Press Ganey.           Those three underlying factors driving discontent translate to different generations differently. Overall, anxiety relates to

The costs of medical care are breaking the system, PwC asserts at the start of its new report on the $1 trillion opportunity to reinvent healthcare. The past 3 years of 8+% U.S. national health expenditure increases are “untenable,” PwC says, with 90% of that spending going toward patients with chronic and mental health conditions.              What will transform the system and move us from “breaking point to breakthrough?” Biology and technology, PwC explains, with technology moving exponentially and simplifying care at scale, and biology decoding the “human operating system” enabling precision at scale. This

“The truism that no one is completely safe until everyone is safe is a truism because it happens to be true.”                  So caution Michael Osterholm, epidemiologist, professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and director of CIDRAP (the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the U-MN) and collaborating writer Mark Olshaker in their new book, The Big One. (In this post, for the sake of brevity, I’ll refer to the two authors as “O&O”). Simply put, the tagline tells us what we are about to read: a

Welcome to Part 2 of 3 in my consideration of Prescription Drug Pricing in America. You can catch up with yesterday’s Part 1 post here, and Part 2 here. The macro-context for these 3 posts are the forecasts for health care spending for the coming year. Health care cost increases forecasted for 2026 will, in significant part, be driven by prescription drug trend. This graphic from this week’s release of the Business Group on Health’s employer survey on healthcare cost growth to 2026 illustrates a key finding that’s echoed in other similar studies recently released and covered here in Health Populi.

U.S. health consumers are roughly split 40/40 when it comes to AI analyzing personal health data to provide personalized advice, with 21% feeling neutral about that. But using AI for regular health updates and guiding us through a pre- or post-care medical journey would be welcome by one in two people, we learn in how to Unlock patient loyalty: New healthcare consumer insights, Huron Consulting Group’s consumer research report polling 1,500 U.S. healthcare consumers.                     Start with peoples’ top reasons for switching health care providers, along with main barriers preventing consumers from

In a recent study which was part of the American Heart Association’s Healthy Bond for Life initiative, two-thirds of Americans told the AHA that they took better care of their pets than themselves. So with a lens on how to help inspire peoples’ self-care, I was keen to dive into research from Pet Partners Insurance (PPI), a pet health insurance provider, collaborating with the Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI), to learn more about The Power of Pet Perks: How Pet-Inclusive Benefits Drive Employee Engagement, Retention, and Positive Workplace Culture.                 My interest

For the third year in a row, medical cost trend — the expected increase of health care costs by health plans — will be 8.5% for group health insurance. This contrasts with a low of 5.5% in 2022 when cost trend dipped coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic….then shot up to 8.0% the following year in patients’ healthcare catch-up mode.                 Welcome to Behind the Numbers 2026, the annual medical trend report from PwC. What’s continuing to drive up health care costs? PwC identifies 4 medical cost inflators, and 2 “deflators” (these being

Yu In a sign of our health communications times, GLP-1s are a much more frequently health topic Americans hear about than autism and ADHD, cosmetic treatments like Botox, Bird flu, sleep issues, or menopause. The Pew Research Center polled 5,123 U.S. consumers in February and March 2025 to gauge peoples’ perspectives on health information and communications trends in America.                           In the study summary titled, From weight-loss drugs to raw milk, Americans hear more often about some health topics than others, the Pew Research team. The finding that

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was put into law in 1991. The first smartphone was launched by IBM the following year in 1992 known as the IBM Simon. Then Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in 2007. Now in 2025, smartphones are ubiquitous, landlines more cut than connected, and texting is the way people communicate. But for many patients, caregivers, health plan members, and health citizens, whichever persona we are in our individual health care journeys at a point in time, the TCPA remains a barrier for people in the U.S. trying to connect with their health care.    

Self-care is a growing thing as people face increasing health care costs, declining access for services and certain products (think: drug shortages and wait times for specialist physician consults), and increasing consumer competence in sourcing information on health care — whether through AI-assisted on-ramps or greater digital literacy in seeking and finding help online. McKinsey has tracked the expanding landscape and value of the global wellness market — and evolving consumer segments — in The $2 trillion global wellness market gets a millennial and Gen Z glow-up.                     I covered wellness

One in three Americans could imagine leaving America for good as expatriates — with access to affordable and reliable health insurance the top consideration, according to research conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of GeoBlue and International Citizens Insurance (ICI). “Thirty-one percent of potential expats cite concerns about healthcare coverage abroad being the reason they haven’t yet taken the leap to move abroad. This trumped concerns about their work and social life abroad,” the survey found.             Earlier this year, The Harris Poll’s American Expats Survey, published in February 2025, found that health care accessibility

While health citizens’ trust in the “messengers” of health information has become polarized by partisans’ political views, there is real concordance of support for many public health priorities. We weave together two current studies to come to this realization: the latest (April 2025) KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust, KFF’s ongoing health survey (published 6 May); and, the de Beaumont – Harvard Chan School of Public Health poll into Americans’ views on public health in “the first 100 days” of President Trump’s presidency.                 First, consider the KFF study, conducted among

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

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

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

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

New data from the American Time Use Survey, research conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows that Americans now favor eating in-home compared with eating out at restaurants. Corroborating this shift is other data from the National Restaurant Association sharing that 74% of all restaurant traffic in 2023 came from “off premises” customers — that is, from takeout and delivery — up from 61% in the pre-COVID era. What does this mean for our health, well-being, and sense of community and connectivity?             I’m preparing a new talk to

While most people in the U.S. who have used large language models (like ChatGPT) for informal learning, entertainment, and getting information about products and services, 39% of U.S. adults have also tapped into LLMs to source information about physical or mental health. This insight is brought to us in the brilliantly titled report, Close encounters of the AI kind, from the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University. The principle author of the survey report is the Center’s Director, Lee Rainie, whose name many of you will know from his two+ decade career at the Pew Research Center (and

On March 11, 2020, The World Health Organization announced that the coronavirus was deemed a pandemic. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asserted, “We have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear.” Five years later, Edelman has fielded a survey to determine what some 4,000 health citizens living in 4 countries (Brazil, India, the UK, and the U.S.) are thinking and feeling about life after COVID-19 — and especially where their trust lies in institutions, fellow citizens, and future public health emergencies. I listened in on a discussion

The nature of retail pharmacy is changing, with both threats and opportunities re-shaping the business itself, and the pharmacy’s role in the larger health/care ecosystem. To keep sharp on the topics, I attended Rx Market Insights: Performance Trends and Outlook for 2025, a data-rich session presented on February 18 by IQVIA and sponsored by Ascend Laboratories. The webinar was hosted by DSN (Drug Store News), appropriately so because the action-packed hour went into detail providing the current state of prescription drugs and the pharmacy in America. Doug Long, IQVIA’s VP of Industry Relations, and Scott Biggs, the company’s Director of Supplier

In the wake of the always-creative ads for Super Bowl and last Sunday’s LIX bout, game-watchers got to see a plethora of commercials dedicated to the annual event’s major features: food and game-day eating. Oh, and what’s turned out to be the most controversial commercial, the one on GLP-1s from Hims & Hers. In that vein, and converging with many news and policy events, I’m trend-weaving the latest insights into that most consumer-facing of the social determinants of health: food, and in particular, health consumers viewing and adopting food as part of their health and well-being moves. First, to the

Two polls from one poll source paint at once a bipartisan and bipolar picture of U.S. health citizens when it comes to health care issues versus health care institutions in America. The Kaiser Family Foundation has hit the 2025 health policy ground running in publishing the January 2025 Health Tracking Poll last week and a poll on health care trust and mis-information yesterday.                        First, the health tracking poll which finds some concurrence between Democrats and Republicans on several big issues facing Americans and various aspects of their health care. As

At this year-end time each year, my gift to Health Populi readers is an annual “TrendCast,” weaving together key data and stories at the convergence of people, health care, and technology with a look into the next 1-3 years. If you don’t know my work and “me,” my lens is through health economics broadly defined: I use a slash mark between “health” and “care” because of this orientation, which goes well beyond traditional measurement of how health care spending is included in a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP); I consider health across the many dimensions important to people, addressing physical,

In our home, we’re feeling very grateful for our healthy lives and work-flows right now, being very mindful about seeing blessings around me and within me…. So I’m sharing the love (or “scaling the love” as I recently coined at OSF’s Digital Health Symposium!) to honor American Thanksgiving 2024 here in Health Populi pointing out several sources highlighting the evidence on gratitude and health….underpinned with love, the ultimate driver of health and well-being.           Leslie Sarasin, President and CEO of FMI, the Food Industry Association, reminds us that, “Our immigrant ancestors, the pilgrim settlers, worked hard

“Peace and health are inextricably connected,” the Editors of the AMA Journal of Ethics introduce an issue of the journal devoted to Peace in Health Care published November 2024.             In this timely journal issue, we can explore nearly one dozen essays exploring the interrelationship between peace and health in various clinical, care, and community settings — including hospice, maternal/child care, built environments, and adjacencies looking at the use of psychedelics and music for quieting one’s inner voices. You, the reader, will find your own favorite issues to explore based on your work, values, and interests.

Two in three people in the U.S. are dealing with Presidential Election Stress — a significant contributor to Americans’ overall stress we learn from the American Psychological Association’s study into Stress in America 2024.                I’ve covered the APA’s Stress in America studies for many years, appreciating the role that anxiety and stress play in peoples’ overall health status and well-being. In 2024, “stress” is a mainstream factor in daily life whether you identify with Main Street or Wall Street. Here was my most recent post on the APA study here in Health Populi,

Only 2 in 5 people in the U.S. strongly trust science concerning food, nutrition, or diet, we learn from the 2024 IFIC Spotlight Survey: Americans’ Trust in Food & Nutrition Science, published in October.             IFIC is the International Food Information Council, a non-profit organization with a mission of communicating science-based information about food safety, nutrition, and sustainable food systems. IFIC surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults online in July to gauge consumers’ views on food and science.             The most-trusted sources of food information are the scientists involved in researching nutrition,

The clinical evidence base continues to grow making the case that art and creativity can be drivers for health and well-being — as it’s proven to me in my own life. Most recently, cases have been made by Emily Peters, documented in her book Remaking Medicine; by Robin Strongin, advocate for arts, medicine, and well-being from her base in Washington, DC; and, by my Belgium-based colleague and friend Koen Kas whose book addressing themes of art and health will soon be published. I was inspired at the convergence of art and well-being during a visit on 20 September to the

Globally, patients are growing consumer muscles leaning into trust that’s building on communications that connect with them, based on insightful research from Smart Communications. This consumer research was fielded by Toluna and Harris Interactive in February and March 2024.                     In The State of Customer Conversations, the report assesses input from global consumers from the APAC region (Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore), German-speaking markets (Austria, Germany, Switzerland), the United Kingdom, and the U.S. The research revealed five key findings, shown in the first exhibit: Communications are increasingly important

Three trends underpin health consumers’ evolving demands for service: spending more but getting less satisfaction and innovation; trusting health care with data but underwhelmed by the use of that personal information; and, growing “shopping” behavior seeking quality, availability, proximity, cost, and options across channels for health care. That’s the current read from McKinsey & Company’s team noting that Consumers rule: Driving healthcare growth with a consumer-led strategy.                 In this health consumer update, McKinsey spoke with three consumer marketing experts from other industries to learn best practices on how best to “be there”

How many people do you know that don’t know their cholesterol or their BMI, their net worth or IQ, their credit score, astrological sign, or ancestry pie-chart? Chances are fewer and fewer as most people have gained access to medical records and lab test results on patient portals, calorie burns on smartwatches, credit scores via monthly credit card payments online, and completing spit tests from that popularly gifted Ancestry DNA test kits received during the holiday season.                       Meet “The Guy Who Didn’t Know His Cholesterol” conceived by Roz Chast,

A “rebel” is both a noun and a verb. As a noun, Merriam-Webster tells us that a rebel is a person who opposes or takes up arms against a government or a ruler. As a verb, “to rebel” is to oppose or disobey one in authority or control, or otherwise renounce and resist by force the authority of one’s government.” An additional definition of the verb is, “to feel or exhibit anger or revulsion.” If you’ve been a patient facing a diagnosis of an illness, whether rare or common, you may well have felt these various feelings stirring inside your self.

The heart is a major health-category at CES 2024, from wristband wearable tech to remote health monitoring devices enabling cardiovascular hospital-to-home care. Abbott, one of the first life science companies to exhibit at CES back in 2022, announced the HeartMates program here at #CES2024 today as part of a panel titled Ahead of the Game: Revolutionizing Athlete Safety with Emerging Health Tech. I have both professional and personal interests in athlete safety, having two nephews who have been involved in acute sports injury and brain health. The panel discussion featured the latest research findings on injury prevention and recovery, with

To complement today’s sobering Health Populi post discussing Accenture’s 2024 Life Trends Study — an outlook for a decade of “deconstruction” based on technology and other trends in the ether — I share with you Amazon’s ad for this holiday season gift-giving motivation. The agency responsible for the campaign, Hungry Man and director Wayne McClammy, weave together a beautiful plotline of friendship, the Beatles’ In My Life, and a time-traveling image that captivated me. The evidence base on loneliness and aging is deep and quantifiable: loneliness can kill like a daily inhalation of a pack of cigarettes. It is up

Three in four U.S. health citizens say the spread of false information about health issues is a major problem, found in Kaiser Family Foundation’s Health Misinformation Tracking Poll Pilot published earlier this month.           KFF’s press release on the study summarized the top-line with, “Most Americans Encounter Health Misinformation, and Most Aren’t Sure Whether It’s True or False.” Explaining the implications of the broad reach of health misinformation in the U.S., Dr. Geeta Nayyar has written the book Dead Wrong: Diagnosing and Treating Healthcare’s Misinformation Illness, due out on October 17th and available now for pre-purchase

What if we asked an artist to re-imagine what health care could be? How might Van Gogh redesign a patient room akin to his room at Arles, or Michelangelo re-think general surgery? How might Thoreau take us on a nature walk for our mental health, or Basquiat channel his inner Da Vinci for a version of Jean-Michel’s Anatomy? In her new book, Artists Remaking Medicine. Emily Peters confronts health care’s paralyzing complexity (her words in the introduction) to invite a community of artists and artful thinkers to share their visions for remaking health care.