How Kroger and Instacart Are Delivering Food as Medicine, and Medicine with Food
A new study in Circulation, published 10 August 2026 found that home delivery of healthy groceries significantly improved blood sugar levels for people dealing with Type 2 diabetes. Now an alliance between the major grocery chain Kroger working with Instacart can scale such an effort for consumers embracing their own approaches to food-as-medicine, combining the delivery of groceries with prescriptions by enrolling in Kroger’s My Prescriptions and Online Pay apps. Kroger operates some 2,800 grocery stores serving 11 million people a day. The banners of Kroger include at least one name you
Health and Healthcare Everywhere, Every Day – PwC and Circana Paint the Latest Picture of Health Consumers
“Follow a consumer through the day, and health starts to show up everywhere.” That’s the observation of the PwC team assessing the annual Voice of the Consumer 2026 survey and shedding light on “the rise of everyday health.” I coined the phrase “HealthConsuming” (TM) in 2019 when I published a book with that title, discussing the convergence of: Patients-as-medical bill payers, bearing more financial risk for their health care Patients as self-carers, using Google to check new prescription medicines, symptoms, and provider profiles, culminating in, Patients “consumed” in two ways by health
Will AI Make Our Minds Feel Like Boiling Frogs, Be Borrowed, or Inspire Agency and Joy? Learning from John Nosta
Like gas and healthcare prices crowding out other spending, the topic of “AI” can crowd out other issues in our email inboxes, LinkedIn and other social media channels, and local and national concerns. Getting my head into John Nosta’s new book, The Borrowed Mind: Reclaiming Human Thought in the Age of AI, could not have come at a better time given AI’s growing presence in my own brain, work conversations, and local political discussions in our community and state. After one read-through, I let John know I would need to do a
Food & Wine Magazine Features Food-As-Medicine: Good for People, Good for the (Local) Economy
When the mainstream media food magazine Food & Wine devotes a long article to the concept of food-as-medicine, it calls to me….loudly. Here’s another proof-point for tying together public and individual health while boosting local economies. F&W featured Stacey Leasca’s essay, What Happens When Doctors Start Prescribing Food Instead of Pills?, online this month, and Stacey did her homework. One of Stacey’s go-to evidence-based resources for her column was the recently-released Rockefeller Foundation report, From Farm to FIM: The Economic Impact of Local Food is Medicine. The Foundation studied several local
The “Five-Month” Cognitive Penalty of Financial Decline: A Significant Loss of Financial Well-Being Correlates with About Five Months of Cognitive Decline A Year
Lower financial well-being and worsening financial conditions have been linked to declining brain function, according to new research from a team at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. The research, Changes in financial well-being and memory function and decline in middle-aged and older adults, was published this month in the American Journal of Epidemiology. “Worse financial well-being in midlife and older age — and especially declines over time — are associated with lower memory scores and faster cognitive decline,” the study notes — among the first to scrutinize the relationship between brain
Jane will be working with EU- and UK-based clients in September and October 2026, collaborating with stakeholders in digital health, public/community health, retail health, and growing opportunities for health-at-home. Stay tuned to her updates here on Health Populi on-the-ground as she lives the digital nomadic work-life in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and in London.
I was grateful to be Jasmine's first conversation-guest on her new podcast, "Aperture - Widen the Frame," where this expert in narrative medicine is bringing together the broad range of voices to sit at the table and address what health care needs: those humans in the health-system-loop who address health equity and empathy along with delivering evidence-based medicine for all.
Jane joined host Dr. Geeta "Dr. G" Nayyar and colleagues to brainstorm the value of vaccines for public and individual health in this challenging environment for health literacy, health politics, and health citizen grievance. Click onto the Pfizer Value of Vaccines site and you can watch four episodes covering the challenges with adult vaccination, the employer and health plan member's journey to vaccination, reimbursement, and collaborating for proactive prevention.