A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

What is a pharmacy? And what are “medicines?” I’ve been thinking about this question for some time, and had the opportunity to consider this in real-time in a sort of back-to-the-past-to-the-future moment when I spent time at the glorious Farmaceutica of Santa Maria Novella (SMN) in Florence, Italy (in longhand, the “Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella)” on 8th November. This meet-up at this 800+ year old institution is one of many touchpoints in my work and personal life between late October and late November, where I’m working on health/care issues in 4 Euro cities: starting with London in week

One of the only uniting factors in U.S. health care across political parties is that most of the nation’s health citizens, cross-party ID, trust doctors and their professional associations for reliable information on vaccines. Pediatricians in particular are mostly-trusted for vaccine facts, according to the KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust: Tylenol-Autism Link and Vaccine Policies, the latest in the Kaiser Family Foundation’s series on Health Information and Trust Tracking Polls.             The biggest trust-chasm when it comes to sources for vaccine information is Americans’ split views on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary

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 idea of “hospitality” in health care is not new, but the nature of how patients-as-consumers are dealing with health care choices based on what looks and feels good is changing the nature of what hospitality means in technology-enabled health care delivery, we learn from the 2025 Patient Consumer Survey conducted by JLL. Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. (JLL)  is one of the largest global commercial real estate firms with a strong portfolio of medical buildings. So it is worthwhile to track what the company is learning about health care delivery distributed both inside and outside of brick-and-mortar medical buildings.    

By the summer of 2025, 1 in 6 U.S. parents had skipped or delayed childhood vaccinations, discovered in the 37th annual edition of the KFF/The Washington Survey of Parents. The study was conducted among 2,716 parents or legal guardians of children, via interviews online in English and Spanish between July 18 and August 4, 2025.              In detail by demographic, 83% of all U.S. parents had kept children up-to-date with recommended childhood vaccines (16% not doing so) 74% of self-described MAGA Republicans kept kids up to date with the recommended vaccines (25% not doing so),

On this U.S. Labor Day 2025, the physical and the fiscal, with the mental, converge as I ponder what working Americans are facing….packing kids up for school, sorting out college payments and loans, dealing with rising costs of daily living, and feeling a growing pinch of what President Trump’s tariffs have had in store now that they’re hitting SKUs around the household. This post will cover most days this week as my own workflows will be heavy as clients return to face returns-to-work and updating scenario plans. We start this post with a headline: “Why Hospitals Are Hiring ‘Revenue Bounty

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

Joining the ranks of technology heavyweights Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Google, and OpenAI, as well as digital health innovators Noom, Oura, Virta Health and Welldoc, who have pledged to “Make Health Tech Great Again,” Albertsons, one of the largest grocery chains in the U.S., put its name on the list with these and other early adopter collaborators. The Albertsons’ company blog published on 31 July discussed the background and rationale for this decision.             “Specifically, we pledge to explore how our Sincerely Health platform can connect to The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Aligned

Happy 60th Anniversary Medicare, today marking six decades since the passage of this law which was a landmark milestone for The Great Society, U.S. style. Since its inception and implementation, Medicare quite often leads in adoption of new medicines, new processes, new technologies in health care. But as I track the phenomenon of health citizenship in the U.S., I observe growing consensus among American patients — cross health plan type — increasingly impatient for health care access. We can now add Americans’ growing dissatisfaction with the prior authorization process, an opinion that now spans majorities of consumers regardless of their

The pandemic era re-shaped consumers’ views on food as an input for health across all dimensions. We look back with affection for our local grocery stores and pharmacies which played leading roles as first responders f0r our health and, quite literally, the basic needs at the base of our personal hierarchies the way Maslow conceived them. As I tracked home-bound consumers’ behaviors from the start of COVID-19 in March 2020, I hunted-and-gathered data from Nielsen, Acosta, Circana, Gallup, Harris, and other sources of consumers @ retail. The DIY food-health concept, coined by Nielsen, was the build-up of our “pandemic pantries.”

When it comes to luxury goods, forget about that Rolex watch, a Louis Vuitton bag, or Porsche. The top luxury item among U.S. consumers in 2025 is time, and with many luxury goods, time is in short supply for most people. An important new report from Duckbill explores the Permission to Ask: Why Americans Need Help — And Why They Struggle to Get It.             The top-line finding gleaned through Duckbill’s survey of 2.069 U.S. consumers in early May 2025 was that 2 in 3 Americans are just trying to get through the day. This struggle

Shades of the year 2020; it’s déjà vu all over again when it comes to consumers’ most trusted brands in 2025 featured in Morning Consult’s Most Reputable Brands report.                         Here’s the list of the top 25 most trusted brands across all consumer touch-points and industries for all adults, ages 18 and older. A quick calculation reveals that consumers most trust brands covering, Home keeping and hygiene – Dawn, Clorox, Lysol, Mr. Clean, Home Depot Self- and personal care – Dove, Oral-B, Kleenex, Colgate Health – BAND-AID, Tylenol Packages

“While children are the group that may be most impacted by the widespread deployment of generative AI, they are simultaneously the group least represented in decision-making processes relating to the design, development, deployment or governance of AI,” we learn in Understanding the Impacts of Generative AI Use on Children, research conducted by The Alan Turing Institute in partnership with the LEGO Group. But it’s the children who shared their perspectives who can teach adults about some potential positive and negative aspects of GenAI, and help inform us in managing downside risks. FYI, The Institute is headquartered in the British Library

It’s been a full week’s coverage on food-as-medicine and food as a driver of health in America this week on the Health Populi blog. Today we turn to the chefs at Escoffier who know food, teach food, and now offer programs in holistic nutrition and wellness through the lens of culinary arts. With that lens, Escoffier recently published a report on the future of healthy eating, which will round out this week’s Health Populi landscape on food and health.           In the paper, the Escoffier team curated data points from many studies — via Gallup, Mintel, Innova,

Consumers around the world feel more invested than ever in what makes people feel both well and prosperous, we learn in the NielsenIQ Global State of Health & Wellness 2025 survey report. But there’s a trust deficit that must be healed in order for a health consumer to invest in services and products that feed health and well-being. NIQ fielded the survey research online in January and February 2025 among nearly 19,000 adults living in 19 countries: Brazil, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Turkiye, UAE, United Kingdom, and

With women’s health and femtech investing in the spotlight in 2025, most of the focus has been on either women’s access to health care services (e.g., for abortion and prenatal/primary care) to start-ups focusing on fertility technology and benefits, along with growing awareness of the long-overlooked menopause market opportunity. Contraception? Not so visible. Of course, we welcomed the Opill to the over-the-counter medicines market last year with FDA approval of the switch to retail pharmacy and vending machine access.                     Now let me point you to a newfangled marketing campaign for

Facing uncertainties across everyday life flows, U.S. consumers look to economic and health security — and welcome businesses to support these, we learn in an analysis from The Conference Board.              The Conference Board (TCB) polled 3,000 U.S. consumers gauging their perspectives on uncertainties emerging out of the new Trump administration’s policy changes introduced in the first quarter of 2025. The chart details people’s financial/fiscal responses in blue, and the health (mental, social, and physical aspects) in yellow: Consumers’ fiscal strategies for coping with uncertainty are to seek out more affordable brands and retailers, adjusting

When it comes to health, the words “fiscal” and “physical” are morphing as peoples’ economic feelings (the “fiscal”) are shaping physical and emotional health, we find in U.S. consumer data presented by John Dick, Founder and CEO of CivicScience.                 The Consumer Technology Association convened a special session with John, who painted a portrait of the U.S. consumer at a point in time — late April 2025 — reminding us more than once during the hourlong session that, “Everything is constantly changing.” One certainty that we can be sure of, in the dismal-scientist way

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

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

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

Tom Lawry may be best-known as a leading voice on AI in health care; after all, he’s written two very well-selling books on the topic, speaks all over the world on the subject, and in his most recent company-based gig helped lead Microsoft’s efforts in AI in health care and life sciences. When his publisher asked him to write a third book on AI in health care – still a hot topic in publishing – Tom said he’d rather turn to a subject long on his mind: the state of health care in America and how to change the conversation

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

People define health across many life-flows: physical health, mental health, social health, appearance (“how I look impacts how I feel”) and, to be sure, financial well-being. In tracking this last health factor for U.S. consumers, several pollsters are painting a picture of financially-stressed Americans as President Trump tallies his first six weeks into the job. The top-line of the studies is that the percent of people in America feeling financially wobbly has increased since the fourth quarter of 2024. I’ll review these studies in this post, and discuss several potential impacts we should keep in mind for peoples’ health and

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

Doctors’ use of and demand for augmented intelligence in medical practice is on the rise — with many factors that could bolster or risk adoption on the journey toward AI in the doctor’s office, based on the latest survey from the American Medical Association (AMA) published this week.               The AMA polled U.S. physicians in November 2024 to gauge their views on augmented intelligence (AI) addressing doctors’ use of AI, perceived opportunities and risks, and enabling factors for adoption. This study updates AMA’s survey conducted in 2023 and found significantly growing confidence and utilization

As humans have undergone personal digital transformations, living omni-channel and appreciating the conveniences that being switched-on can bring, there’s a growing demand for “analog wellness.” That’s one of ten trends covered in the Global Wellness Institute’s (GWI) report on 2025 Wellness Trends, and one I want to dig into early this year as consumers are facing growing challenges to our privacy, social bullying, and workforce stressors compelling many employees to spend too many hours in digital isolation and loneliness. To paint the larger landscape of and drivers underpinning analog wellness, I will weave several important reports and studies together, all

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 the start of each new year comes the World Economic Forum meet-up in Davos, Switzerland and with that conference start today, 20 January 2025, the publication of the Edelman Trust Barometer. Now in the study’s 25th annual edition, the Edelman Trust Barometer this year finds us, globally, in a Crisis of Grievance which is eroding trust. Edelman surveyed 1,150 residents (plus or minus) in each of 28 countries around the world, yielding over 33,000 citizens’ voices sharing perspectives on trust and institutions. Interviews were fielded from late October to mid-November 2024.                 

While nursing has ranked top of U.S. professions for honesty and ethics for over a decade, U.S. adults speak even more assuredly in 2025 that nurses far outrank other professions in America. according to the latest Gallup Poll. The study summary report is titled, “Americans’ Ratings of U.S. Professions Stay Historically Low.”                       The data speak for itself — in 2025, the margin of people who put nurses on top of all other professions in America is much wider than in past years — and physicians have fallen further down

People are living everyday life in digital coexistence — where the connected technologies we use for communication and entertainment now enable life-flows across our lives, morning to night, at work and play and even while we’re sleeping. Welcome to the five key tech-trends for 2025, brought to life Sunday afternoon by Melissa Harrison, CTA’s Vice President of Marketing & Communications tag-teaming with Brian Comiskey, Senior Director, Innovation & Trends. This annual session at CES always provides a practical context for exploring the annual conference, the largest in the world covering technology used by everyday people. And this year, the trends

Most health citizens in the U.S. trust the CDC, NIH, and FDA, and most people also want the 47th incoming President Donald Trump to strengthen health/care institutions — from the VA and FDA to Medicare, Medicaid, as well as the CDC and Affordable Care Act. The Axios/Ipsos American Health Index, published this week, reveals both concurrence among U.S. health consumers with some striking differences across political party ID. Axios and Ipsos fielded a survey among 1,002 U.S. adults in early December to glean peoples’ perspectives on health, trust, and a variety of health and social policies.        

December 1 2024 was World AIDS Day, which was observed by the Biden White House with the display of the entire AIDS Memorial Quilt on the South Lawn — all 54 tons of it. The Biden-Harris Administration announced efforts, in advance of World AIDS Day, to continue to fight HIV/AIDS “at home and abroad.” The press release for the effort noted that, ”We remember those who have died from AIDS-related illnesses—honoring their courage and contributions as essential to the progress made thus far. We also stand in solidarity with the more than 39 million people with HIV around the world.

Patients “yearn” for personalized services and relationships in health care — optimistic that technology can help deliver on that hope — we learn in Healthcare’s Future: Balancing Progress and Perception, a health consumer survey report from Lavidge. Lavidge, a communications/PR/marketing consultancy, polled U.S. patients’ attitudes about health care and technology in June 2024, publishing the report earlier this month.                   Start with over-arching finding that, “Three out of four patients believe the U.S. healthcare system is broken and there is a strong sense of distrust,” Lavidge asserts right at the top of

A new report from the OECD asks the question, “How’s Life?” with the tagline letting us know the plotline focuses on “well-being and resilience in times of crisis.”       The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has tracked the well-being of member nations for the past six years, taking a broad view on the definition of holistic health — including physical, mental, financial, and social aspects of people living in OECD countries. The first “How’s Life?” report was published at the height of the global financial crisis; the authors of this report introduce it saying that, “the

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,

Beyond women’s health and abortion politics, most Americans are looking for more health care baked into the 2024 Elections, based on a new poll from Gallup in collaboration with West Health.           Two in three U.S. adults thought health care was not receiving enough attention during the 2024 Presidential campaign as of September 2024. This is a majority shared opinion for voters across the three party IDs in the U.S., shown in the first bar graph. The research polled 3,660 U.S. adults in September, about two-thirds before the presidential debate held September 10, and about one-third

“Voter registration in hospitals is the new frontier in health care.” That’s the headline in a WBUR story last week detailing the efforts of health care professionals in “amplifying” their patients’ voices inside and outside of the hospital walls by advocating for their health citizenship — through voter registration and public health policy advocacy.                  I’m a long-time evangelist for health citizenship and the role that a person’s engagement in the civic commons plays in one’s own health, the health of their communities and of the nation as a whole. I’m not alone

People have been undergoing their own human kind of digital transformations, turbocharged during the pandemic for many who never used Zoom or Amazon Prime or Uber. That consumer-borne digital transformation has shaped people as health consumers, many having used telehealth and appointment-scheduling online. And peoples’ relationships with pharmacies are also changing, with more health consumers finding greater satisfaction with their mail order pharmacy experiences than with moat retail brick and mortar chain drug stores, the latest J.D. Power 2024 U.S. Pharmacy Study found.                       It’s clear that mail order is

Two-thirds of Americans have a lot of confidence in small business in the U.S. In second place, 61% of people in the U.S. have confidence in the military, followed by 51% with the police. The Gallup Poll on Americans’ confidence in 17 U.S. institutions is out today, reflecting a snapshot of U.S. adults’ views on the organizations that touch their daily lives. And health care doesn’t fare too well in this latest read.                 Only 36% of Americans have confidence in the U.S. medical system, tied with peoples’ feelings of lack of confidence

“’A reform,’ wrote a 19th-century British parliamentarian, ‘is a correction of abuses. A revolution is a transfer of power. As we celebrate the American Revolution, catalyzed by men who broke ranks with their peers to overthrow a power structure that seemed immutable, let’s also celebrate those physicians who broke with their peers and declared independence for American patients.”                  So begins an informative, timely essay on participatory medicine and patient engagement researched and beautifully written by Michael Millenson, whom I am blessed to call both dear friend and professional colleague. Michael’s essay on the

Patients’ experience with health care in the U.S. dropped to its lowest point over the past year, explained in the 15th release of The Beryl Institute – Ipsos PX Pulse survey.         The study into U.S. adult consumers’ perspectives defined “patient experience” (PX) as, “The sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care.” The survey was fielded by Ipsos among 1,018 U.S. adults in March 2024.         Health care providers (and other industry stakeholders that go B2B or B2B2C (or P) are all thinking