The truest form of health reform and consumer-directed health care isn’t in a high-deductible health plan or a health savings account, and it doesn’t come out of Washington DC or your employer’s health benefits office.

It comes from you in the form of self-care and DIY healthcare. In this case, think “inspired by sport, powered by you.”

I’ll be participating on a panel at this weekend’s South-by-Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, along with three wellness innovators: Nick Buettner of the Blue Zones project, Mary Liz McCurdy of Google, and John Wilbanks from Sage Bionetworks. Together, our quartet will brainstorm the topic of The End of Experts – Crowdsourcing Your Wellness as part of the SXSW Interactive meet-up. (Come find us on Saturday, 11 March, at 11 am at the Wanderlust Austin space at 206 E. 4th Street).

We’re focusing in on how peer-to-peer wellness is growing based on several driving forces, including trust, the democratization of information and science, the adoption of Social/Mobile/Local, and peoples’ growing adoption of digital tools for more personalized, more controllable health and wellness engagement. We’ll dig into the difference between “expertise” versus “science,” and how people are growing new muscles (literally and figuratively) to crowdsource their wellness from their unique N of 1 scaling to peers and their communities.

Our session is part of the two-day adidas Future/Fit meet-up, convening on Saturday 11 March and Sunday 12 March, at the Wanderlust.

This is the first time adidas is convening a meeting like this at SXSW, and they’ve assembled a great range of experts on the mind, the body and behavior. Other speakers include Christine Day, the CEO of Luvo; Jessica Mega, CMO of Verily (part of Alphabet); Candace Parker, the WNBA star; Sasha DiGiulian, pro climber; Robin Arzon, ultramarathoner; Dr. Liz Joy, President of the American College of Sports Medicine; Mark Verstegen, founder and President of EXOS; Stacey Burr, Head of adidas Digital Sports; and Nicole Vollebregt, who leads adidas women’s group.

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  Health and wellness has a growing footprint at SXSW. I’ve participated in five of the past six years of SXSW conferences, participating on panels covering sitting as the new smoking; the emergency of mobile health apps; the digital health bust or boom economy; and, the nature of privacy for digital health data.

With this event, adidas is purposefully stepping into wellness in a new way, extending its brand, values and design sensibilities to benefit peoples’ health and wellbeing. Stay tuned for more announcements from the company which is part of the larger retail health and wellness landscape I’ve been documenting over the past several years.