Men’s Fertility Feelings – The Influence of Trust and Social Media (My Progyny Post #3)
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
Trust and AI in Healthcare: At a Crossroads, Edelman Finds
Enthusiasm for innovation is not a guaranteed thing; furthermore, trust in AI lags trust in the overall technology sector, we find in the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer research through a Flash Poll: Trust and Artificial Intelligence at a Crossroads, discussed in a webcast on 3 December. People in the U.S. are more than twice as likely to reject the growing use of AI than embrace it, with the embrace of AI much lower than peoples’ enthusiasm for it. Edelman conducted the poll in five countries — Brazil, China, Germany, the UK and the US — with sample sizes at least 1,000+
A Month Until #CES2026 – The Journey to Our Personal Health Operating Systems
In a month, I’ll board a plane for Las Vegas to spend a week at CES 2026, the annual electronics conference that last year brought together over 140,000 global technology stakeholders to display, demonstrate, and sell the latest in consumer-facing tech. This will be my fourteenth CES (including the virtually convened meeting held in 2021). If you want to time travel, here’s a link to an early CES post featuring “The Battle of the (Wrist)bands.” Indeed, the digital health aisle at the time had many wrist-worn activity trackers, largely amped-up pedometers, with the likes
Giving Thanks for Pinksocks Today and Every Day….celebrating the book!
As today is Thanksgiving in America, my tradition here on Health Populi is to express gratitude for some aspect of life and living, Most often, I’ve referred to the Engage With Grace Project which reminds us to be mindful of our and our loved ones’ end-of-life wishes as we convene around the big table today with our families and friends over big food and drink. See here for more on Engage With Grace, a project for which I’m most grateful for launching by Alexandra Drane and Matthew Holt For today’s gratitude message,
Feeling Under-Served and Overlooked: Men’s Views on Their Fertility Journeys (My Progyny Post #1)
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
Where Health Meets Beauty, Mental Health, and Faith: Learning from the Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella
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
The Real Face of Men’s Health in America: Years of Life Lost, Yearning for Social Connection, and Eroding Trust in Health Care
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
What Pantone’s and Insulet’s Omnipod Mango Colorway Means for Patients and Community
“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 10 Years, Health Care Will Happen Where Life Happens – PwC’s Tea Leaves into 2035
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
Dr. Osterholm Explains “The Big One” – A Deja Vu Moment with a True North Public Health Expert
“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
On Labor Day 2025: From Health Care “Revenue Bounty Hunters,” Medical Bills Back into FICO Scores, the Rise of “Cute Debt,” and Tariffs — U.S. Consumers’ Face Eroding Financial Health
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. Physicians Have to Deal with the Growing Info-Demic of Disinformation Meant to Mislead Patients
Close to 100% of U.S. doctors agree that misinformation and/or disinformation undermines patient care, according to a new survey from the Physicians Foundation. The Foundation polled over 1,000 U.S. physicians in late May 2025 to gauge doctors’ perspectives on information and patients’ health literacy. Furthermore, over one-half of physicians believe that misinformation – and/or disinformation — significantly impacts the ability to deliver quality patient care. The first graphic differentiates between “misinformation” and “disinformation,” where the latter is false or inaccurate information deliberately intended to mislead people. Misinformation is somewhat more benign in
Prescription Drug Pricing in America – a 3-Part Update, From the Over- the-Counter OPill and “Half-Price” Ozempic to Most-Favored-Nation Rx (Part 2)
“Big Pharma has a new vision for selling drugs. It’s going to the mattresses,” writes Josh Nathan-Kazis in MSN earlier this week. That is, going direct-to-consumer (DTC) the way the mattress industry has done in the past decade, cutting out brick-and-mortar sleep shops at retail. In the case of “Make(ing” like a mattress company,” Josh explains, the pharma manufacturers “sell shots and pills straight to the consumer.” In this case, that’s cutting out the pharmacy benefits managers and other intermediaries that have taken dollars in the transactions of drug benefit claims which have added costs to payers (health plan sponsors
What U.S. Consumers Are Thinking About Tariffs’ Impacts on Health Care: Looking to Ipsos, QCentrix and Goldman Sachs
Most Americans, thinking as health consumers, believe that tariffs could impact peoples’ ability to pay for costly prescription drugs and be priced out of paying for check-ups and medical supplies, based on results from two studies on consumers’ views on tariffs and their health care from Ipsos and Q-Centrix. Ipsos’s consumer survey found that younger consumers, people earning lower incomes, and folks living in the suburbs feel even more stressed about tariffs’ impact on medical care — along with more people identifying as Democrats or Independent voters. With
Women Walk a Financial Tightrope: What That Means for Women’s Health, Mind, Body, & Wallet
Financial stress and anxiety have an ‘outsized’ negative impact on the well-being of women in America, compared to male counterparts, we learn in Health. Wealth, and Happiness – Helping to overcome roadblocks to women’s well-being, a report from the Guardian Life Insurance Company. This report is part of Guardian’s annual research program called Mind, Body, Wallet, which the company launched 14 years ago. The goal of Mind, Body. Wallet is to assess how health citizens define “well-being” in daily living, making the crucial connections between mental health (“Mind”), physical health (“Body”), and money
Ozempic: A Medicine, and a “Cultural Shorthand” – What The Harris Poll Knows About Gen Z Consumers and Health Care in America
Among the top 20 fastest-growing growth brands beloved by Americans between 18 and 28 years of age — that is, Gen Z consumers — we see brand-equity love for companies channeling athleisure, fashion, new-fangled financial products, and food & beverage brands. And then there’s Ozempic, which gained 10 full percentage points from Q1-2025 to Q2-2025, according to The Harris Poll’s QuestBrand research. What does it mean that a prescription drug has joined these brand-loved rankings? The QuestBrand research found that as of the second quarter of 2025, more than one in 3
How Taking Care of Our Pets Could Inspire Us to Care Better for Ourselves (and Each Other)
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
As Time Becomes More of a Luxury Thing, Consumers Ration Visits to Health Care Providers
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
Americans Hear More Frequently About GLP-1 Drugs Than About Menopause, Sleep, or Bird Flu
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
What Children Can Teach Us About Using GenAI – Insights from The Alan Turing Institute and LEGO
“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
The Spirit for Eating Healthier Is Willing, But the Cost of Doing So “Outweighs” the Will – Listening to Escoffier
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,
The Next Version of Medical Tourism: Medical Immigration?
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
If Food Is Medicine, Some Might Feel It’s a Luxury Good Like a Specialty Drug
Most people in the U.S. say it’s harder to eat healthy given the cost of “healthy food,” we learn in the report on Americans on Healthy Food and Eating from the Pew Research Center, published 7 May 2025. With a view that healthy food is “too expensive,” it may feel like aspiring for it feels like luxury-good shopping, or being a patient prescribed a specialty (high-cost) drug. The Pew team polled 5,123 U.S. adults’ perspectives on eating, fielded between 24 February and 2 March 2025. This report is timely as Secretary of Health and
Americans’ Trust in Public Health Agencies Has Become Politicized, Though There is Bipartisan Support for Many Public Health Priorities
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
How Consumers’ Economic Sentiments Are Shaping Peoples’ Financial and Emotional Well-Being (Spoiler: Not So Good): Learning from CivicScience
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
Loneliness As Risk Factor for Health and Medication Adherence
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.
The Era of Healthcare Grievance: The Edelman Trust Barometer’s Take on Health and Trust in 2025
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
“The Church As Field Hospital” – Learning from Pope Francis About the Power of Loneliness and Connection
“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
U.S. Health Care in 2025 Requires Scenario Planning: The Uncertainties (AI!?) That Inspire DIY Healthcare
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
The Biggest Opportunity for Sporting Goods is Consumers’ Physical Inactivity: Learning from McKinsey (with a personal nod to pickleball)
McKinsey just published a detailed report into Sporting Goods 2025, which the firm calls a “new balancing act” that must turn uncertainty into opportunity. The report is based on five key observations: Only a few sporting goods companies have expanded growth and margins since 2018 — and must “rethink the value chain” in the face of challenging geopolitical headwinds One-half of so-called “active consumers” say that fitness is a core element of their identity, with emotional connections to brands they purchase for the lifestyle Incumbent sporting goods companies are losing market share to
Still Life in Need: Art, Food Justice, and Health
As Thomas Jefferson reminded us, travel makes us wiser…but less happy. And so it is when you confront a piece of art that makes you stop in your tracks, swim in it, and know what it’s saying in terms of what you know you know. Such was the case yesterday during a walking meeting through the Frist Art Museum in Nashville when I passed by this quilt, a multimedia work titled “Still Life in Need” by Lee Colvin, a local artist. This work was part of a
From Bowling Alone to Eating Alone – What the Shift to Take-Out Food Means for Our Social Well-Being and Mental Health
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
A Mis-Trust Hangover for Health Care 5 Years After COVID Began – an Edelman Trust Barometer Update
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
Consumers Are Financially Stressed – What This Means for Health/Care in 2025
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
GLP-1s at the Pharmacy – A Lens on Consumer-Driven Retail Health (with Hims & Hers stock price update)
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
COVID-19 Further Splits American Society as Trust Continues to Erode – a 5-Year Perspective from Pew
The partisan divide in the U.S., exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, could set the stage for another public health emergency given eroding trust in institutions — especially in media, government, and public health officials. I base this sobering forecast on the latest study from the Pew Research Center which polled people in the U.S. about their pandemic-perspectives, detailed in the report 5 Years Later: America Looks Back at the Impact of COVID-19. Couple these findings with the recent dismissal of public health “disease detectors” working with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and what is currently termed a “quademic” (that
Health Consumer Check-In: From Digital Detox to Analog Wellness, Social Re-Wilding, and a Return to the Bookstore
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
Can the Private Sector Serve Up Sufficient Health Media to Compensate for Public Sector Gaps?
In researching several .gov websites from last Monday 20th January 2025, I had an ongoing frustrating user experience in being faced with “404 Error” messages like this one from WhiteHouse.gov. “President Trump’s First Week Hammered Public Health,” Dr. Arthur Kellerman, an ER doc, public health researcher, and patient advocate asserted in Forbes yesterday: “For now, the only health communications Americans receive will come from sources outside the government, such as professional societies, non-governmental organizations, advocacy groups, and businesses, vaccine skeptics, conspiracy theorists, foreign agents and bots posing as Americans to spread disinformation. It will be up to us to figure out what to
How World AIDS Day 2024 Can Inform Healthcare in 2025
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.
The Evidence for Gratitude and Health, 2024 Giving Thanks
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
3 in 4 U.S. Patients Say the Healthcare System is Broken — But Technology Can Help
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
“People will seek wellness, peace and healing” – Reading the GWI Future of Wellness Report, 2024 Trends
Healthy eating and weight loss, personal care and beauty, exercise and physical activity, and wellness tourism are the four biggest components of the world’s wellness economy, quantified in The Future of Wellness, 2024 Trends, the perennial report from the Global Wellness Institute (GWI). Here’s the bubble chart, which I’ve updated with the 2025 data so we get a sense of what the coming year will bring for the eleven total segments that make up the global wellness market. The fine print of the projections for these areas identifies the annual growth rates for
How’s Life? Around the World – In the U.S., It’s the Sadness That Stands Out
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
We Are Stressed in America – APA’s 2024 Stress in America Survey on “A Nation in Turmoil”
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,
How Much Would Adults Age 50+ Trust AI-Generated Health Information? Not Much.
Health literacy and, indeed, literacy across the many layers relevant for health (digital, medical, financial), is a challenge for people of all ages. The Institute for Healthcare Policy Innovation’s National Poll on Healthy Aging at the University of Michigan focused on people 50 and over in their latest study published this month: Health Literacy – How Well Can Older Adults Find, Understand, and Use Health Information. On the upside, 4 in 5 older people (50+) feel confident in being able to spot health mis-information, the chart from the Poll report clearly tells us. 20% of older U.S. health citizens are
Peoples’ Lack of Trust in Science Extends to Views on Food and Nutrition
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,
Well-Being Burnout – Lululemon’s 4th Annual Study Into Our Pressured Lives
Lululemon has published the 2024 Global Well-Being Report, a study into peoples’ perspectives on their personal health from the company best known for athleisure wear and self-care. This year’s report is titled, The Pressure to Be Well. That pressure is coming from peoples’ experiencing “well-being burnout.” In the company’s fourth annual report on well-being, Lululemon learned that most people have tried to adopt personal strategies to bolster their health, and one-half of these folks are confronting “well-being burnout.” Lululemon collaborated with Edelman Data & Intelligence to field the study in April and May 2024 in 15 markets where the company
All Heart – Thinking Hearts, Health, and Love in Valencia, Spain
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 Seek Clear Communications to Build Trust with Healthcare, Especially in the AI Era
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
“Listen to Me:” Personalization in Health Care Starts With Taking Patients’ Voices Seriously – the 15th Beryl Institute-Ipsos PX Pulse Survey
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
The ROI on Patient Experience = Loyalty, Trust and Revenue – Listening to Accenture
When health care providers and payers make patients’ lives easier, there’s a multiplying factor for loyalty and revenue growth, according to Accenture’s latest look into the value of experience in The Power of Trust: Unlocking patient loyalty in healthcare. Accenture conducted two surveys for this research, assessing nearly 16,000 U.S. adult consumers’ views on healthcare providers and health insurance plans. Several factors underpin patients’ selection of a new health care provider, especially: Access (70%), with a convenient location, quickly available appointments, digital/mobile/social interactions, and virtual care availability; and, The provider being a trusted source
A Tax on Moms’ Financial and Physical Health – The 2024 Women’s Wellness Index
“Motherhood is the exquisite inconvenience of being another person’s everything” is a quote I turn to when I think about my own Mom and the remarkable women in my life raising children. With Mother’s Day soon approaching, the 2024 Women’s Wellness Index reminds us that the act of “being another person’s everything” has its cost. The Index, sponsored by PYMNTS in collaboration with CareCredit, was built on survey responses from 10,045 U.S. consumers fielded in November-December 2023. The study gauged women’s perspectives on finances, family, social life impacts on health and well-being. My key takeaway from
The Trust-Innovation Gap – Welcome to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer
If it’s January, it’s Davos-time — that is the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum convening global experts and passionistas focused on big ideas and challenges facing us mere humans living on Planet Earth. Parallel with the WEF is the annual publication of the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer, now in its 24th year, focusing on global citizens’ concerns that unite people around the world. For the 2024 study, Edelman’s team fielded the survey in November 2023, collecting input from over 32,000 people living in 28 countries. About 1,150 interviews (plus or minus) were done in each nation which included
An Extraordinary Life and Voice: A Call-to-Action from Casey Quinlan, featured in the Journal of Participatory Medicine
It is about time that a healthcare journal features examples of patient-leaders who have pioneered activism, innovation, and The first exemplar in this vein is Casey Quinlan, whom we lost all-too-soon earlier this year on 24th August. A team of her appreciative colleagues and friends wrote up the first in a new series called “Extraordinary Lives” published in the Journal of Participatory Medicine (JPM) titled “An Extraordinary Voice Expressed Through Humor: A Tribute to Casey Quinlan.” I played a minor role in getting this essay to the finish line, and am grateful to have had the opportunity to do so
Everybody is Stressed in America, and It’s Not Good for Our Health: the 2023 Update from the American Psychological Association
The U.S. is “a nation recovering from collective trauma,” the according to the latest survey on Stress in America 2023 from the American Psychological Association (APA). The APA has been quantifying Stress in America since 2007; for context, at the end of that year The Great Recession kicked in, and in response President Obama’s team put together assistance to bolster the national economy, jobs, and health technology (codified in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). American health citizens are experiencing a deja vu in 2023 akin to their financial stress experienced in the APA 2008 Stress
“Healthcare Isn’t Healthy:” the Global Challenge of Health Equity, and Calls-to-Action
Discrimination in health care is reported by more people in the U.S. than in Germany, Spain, or the U.K., we learn in the research reported in The Intersection of Health Equity in Communities & Business Strategy: A Call-to-Action, from Omnicomm PR Group (OPRG) and Atlantic Insights. The study was conducted among 6,000 people living in Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, fielding 1,500 interviews in each of the four countries in March 2023. The U.S. survey sample included 375 people identifying as Black, White, Hispanic, or
Can Artists Help to Remake Medicine? A New Book Asks and Answers (Yes!)
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.
Mental Health Services Grow in the Retail Health Ecosystem
With May being Mental Health Awareness Month, there’s no shortage of press releases promoting a wide range of services and programs emerging from both the public and private sectors. In the wake of the COVID-19 public health crisis, the exposed epidemic-beyond-the-pandemic of mental health has inspired many collaborations between public, private commercial and not-for-profit organizations. These have begun to embed mental health into the larger retail health ecosystem. I’ll point to several examples as signposts for this phenomenon. Walgreens and Mental Health America – This collaboration expands Walgreens’ work with Mental Health America focusing in
Consumers Expect Every Company to Play a Meaningful Role in “My Health” – New Insights from the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer
People have expanded their definitions of health in 2023, with mental health supplanting physical health for the top-ranked factor in feeling healthy. Welcome to the Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust and Health, released this week, with striking findings about how the economic, post-pandemic life, pollution and climate change all feed mis-trust among citizens living in 13 countries — and their eroding trust for health care systems. While these factors vary by country in terms of relative contribution to citizen trust, note that in the U.S., social polarization plays an outsized role in factors that “make us
My Health, My Data – Thinking Consumers, Privacy and Self-Care at HIMSS 2023
The Washington State legislature passed House Bill 1155, aka the My Health, My Data Act, last week. Governor Jay Inslee is expected to sign this into State law later this year. The bill expands privacy protections for Washington State’s health citizens beyond HIPAA’s provisions. The My Health, My Data Act defines “consumer health data” as “personal information that is linked or reasonably linkable to a consumer and that identifies a consumer’s past, present, or future physical or mental health.” The ethos of the name and the intent of this law is a perfect vision for
Bayer at The Big Game LVII: the Heart Health Ecosystem is Ripe for Self-Care and DIY Health at Home
Joke if you must about Big Game cuisine being typically packed with calories and fat and carbs….and as such, not-so-great for health. For me, the ads are the attraction during The Big Game (along with the Philadelphia Eagles). In this year’s ad line-up, health will be featured in high-priced spots as it has for the past few years. Last year, I was intrigued by a female-focused 30-second spot from Hologic, educating viewers on cervical cancer, discussed here in Health Populi. This year, my eyes are on Bayer Aspirin’s campaign “encouraging sports fans to keep their heart
What Are Patients Looking for in a Doctor? It Depends on Who You Ask…and Their Race
While the same proportion of Black and White patients say they are looking for a doctor with empathy and compassion, there are relatively large differences between patients based on their race, found in the Everyday Health-Castle Connolly Physician-Consumer study. The survey was conducted in December 2022 among a group of 1,001 U.S. consumers and 277 Castle Connolly health care professionals. As the first bar chart illustrates “where patients differ, “Black people were nearly twice as likely as white people (41 percent versus 22 percent) to completely agree that they would be more comfortable and
The Polarization of Trust in 2023 – What It Means for Health, via Edelman at Davos WEF 23
For the third year in a row, citizens in most of the world see business as the most-trusted institution, above government, media, and NGOs, found in the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, unveiled this week at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The Edelman team conducted this 23rd annual study in November 2022 in 28 countries, among over 32,000 people — some 1,150 residents per country polled. (Note that Russia, studied in the surveys between 2007 and 2022, was not included in the 2023 research). The first chart arrays
While Nurses and Doctors Still Rank Highest in Trust, Gallup Finds Trust-Erosion by Party ID
In the annual 2023 Gallup poll on honesty and ethics in professions in the U.S., the good news for the human capital of health care is that nurses, physicians and pharmacists continue to lead Americans’ ratings across professions in first, second, and third place respectively. The bummer is that that trust equity has eroded in the past year — especially among health citizens who identify as Republican voters. Start with the upside, which is the perennial Gallup finding that health care’s front-line workers are the most-trusted professions in the U.S. And
The Tik Tok’ing of Medical Mis-Information: Doctors’ and Patients’ Roles in Curating Healthy Advice
Doctors in the U.S. believe that the medical mis-information problem is worsening, learned in survey research from Merck Manuals. Doctors and patients, both, have roles to play in addressing medical misinformation online. Less than half of consumers, 44%, said that that there is more medical mis-information online than previously. That’s less than half of the percentage of doctors saying so — 98%, virtually all U.S. physicians, citing the problem. There were several disconnects noted in the Merck Manuals study showing starkly different perceptions of health information online between doctors and patients:
The Food-Finance-Health Connection: Being Thankful, Giving Thanks
Food features central in any holiday season, in every one’s culture. For Thanksgiving in the United States, food plays a huge role in the history/legend of the holiday’s origins, along with the present-day celebration of the festival. At the same time, in and beyond the U.S., families’ finances will also be playing a central role in dinner-table conversations, shopping on the so-called “Black Friday” retail season (which has extended long before Friday 25th November), and in what’s actually served up on those tables. Let’s connect some dots today on food, finance and health as we enter the holiday season many
Health Is Social, With More People Using Apps for Physical and Emotional Wellbeing
People who need people aren’t just the luckiest people in the world: they derive greater benefits through monitoring their health via apps that make it easier to make healthy choices. Channeling Barbra Streisand here to call out a key finding in new consumer research from Kantar on Connecting with the Health & Wellness Community. Kantar polled 10,000 online consumers in ten countries to gain perspectives on health citizens’ physical and emotional health and the role of technology to bolster (or diminish) well-being. The nations surveyed included Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Singapore, South Africa, Spain,
Health is Everywhere, and Telehealth Is Health – And It’s Personal
If health is nurtured and made where we live, work, play pray, learn, and shop, then healthcare should be everywhere. That’s the promise, increasingly a reality, of telehealth. We are in the middle of Telehealth Awareness Week, an advocacy program launched by the ATA (American Telemedicine Association) whose mission I share — that #TelehealthIsHealth. Follow that hashtag on Twitter and other social media channels, and you’ll find lots of folks who believe, know, and live this. My personal telehealth journey began with an online encounter in December 1996 when my husband and I were
Physicians More Bullish On the Benefits of Digital Tools for Patient Care, the AMA Tells Us
Most doctors see the advantages of digital health tools like telehealth, consumers’ access to their health information, and point-of-care workflow solutions, the American Medical Association found in a survey of 1300 physicians, published in September 2022. The AMA first conducted research with physicians and their views on digital health in July 2016. This year’s study was designed to compare current clinicians’ perspectives with those garnered in the 2016 and 2019 studies. There is a clear and positive shift of doctors’ adoption of and appreciation for digital tools, with “growth in enthusiasm” concentrated in tele-visits, the
Most Consumers Are Health and Wellness Consumers Even in Hard Financial Times, Accenture Finds
Consumers consider health and well-being as an “essential” household spending category based on new research from Accenture. Accenture polled over 11,000 consumers in 17 countries, considering how people are faring amid “widespread uncertainty and personal financial strains,” in the firm’s words. While two in three consumers feel financially stressed, 4 in 5 intend to grow or hold their personal spending on health and fitness steady in the next year. The first chart graphs data from Accenture’s global survey. In the U.S., more granularly, 26% of consumers intend to increase spending on health and wellness
The Retail Health Battle Royale in the U.S. – A Week-Long Brainstorm, Day 1 of 5
I’ve returned to the U.S. for a couple of months, having lived in and worked from Brussels, Belgium, since October 2021 (save for about ten days in March 2022). Work and life slow down in Europe in July and August, giving us the opportunity to return to our U.S. home base, reunite with friends and family, and re-join life and living this side of the Atlantic. The timing of my return to the U.S. coincides with a retail health hurricane of big announcements shaking up the health/care ecosystem. Among these events are Amazon’s plan to acquire One Medical, Apple’s publication of
The Old Gays Working with Walgreens on TikTok: Breaking Down Stereotypes and Having Fun with Health
How much do I love this media campaign from Walgreens, collaborating with the foursome The Old Gays who have a growing multi-million person fan base on TikTok? How much? A whole lot! Kudos to Walgreens for creating engaging, informative, and fun! content to learn about how people can benefit from using the company’s app ….for, Ordering prescriptions (90-day supply) Receiving delivery same-day 24/7 pharmacy chat on pricing, prescription drug information, and medications. The plotline kicks off with 3 of the 4 quartet (Jessay Martin, Robert Reeves and Mick Peterson) looking for their friend Bill Lyons, who is missing from their
More Americans Trust Small Biz and the Military than the Medical System, Gallup Finds
The most trusted institutions in the U.S. are small business and the military, the only two sectors in which a majority of Americans have confidence. Americans’ trust in institutions hit new historic lows in 2022, Gallup found in its latest poll of U.S. sentiment across all major sectors. Today, more Americans have faith in the police than in the medical system, according to a Gallup poll finding that Confidence in U.S. Institutions Down; Average at New Low. published this week of Independence Day 2022. Confidence runs from a higher of 68% for
The Higher Cost of Cookouts – Happy, Healthy Independence Day 2022
On this July 4th holiday, Americans aren’t feeling quite so financially independent on Independence Day 2022. The cost of a cookout for your family and friend group of 10 rose over $10 this year, 17% higher than in 2021, based on the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual assessment of BBQing Economics on the Fourth of July. This estimate is based on a market-basket menu that includes cheeseburgers, pork chops, chicken breasts, homemade potato salad, strawberries and ice cream. Key factors driving up the cost of an All-American cookout include supply chain disruptions (a hangover
The Care Crisis – Robots Won’t Save Us
Among the many lessons we should and must take emerging out of the COVID-19 pandemic, understanding and addressing the caregiver shortage-cum-crisis will be crucial to building back a stronger national economy and financially viable households across the U.S. And if you thought robots, AI and the platforming of health care would solve the shortage of caregivers, forget it. Get smarter on the caregiver crisis by reading a new report, To Fix the Labor Shortage, Solve the Care Crisis, from BCG. You’ll learn that 9 of 10 new care-sector jobs will be in-person for
The Evolution of a Patient Ambassador – Learning from Stacy Hurt
“I am a health care executive who happens to be a patient, caregiver, and advocate,” Stacy Hurt explained to me in a Zoom chat we shared on 31 May. I asked her to meet with me to discuss her professional news update: being appointed Parexel’s first Patient Ambassador. My Zoom invitation to Stacy was a very convenient excuse for me to catch up with a friend in the field: we have known each other since Stacy started to grow her health-social media presence on Twitter. And that involvement in
Jasper, Scaling a Human Touch for People Dealing with Cancer, Now With Walgreens
Each year, the first Sunday in June marks National Cancer Survivors Day. This year’s NCSD occurred two days ago on Sunday, 5th June. When you’re a cancer survivor, or happen to love one, every day is time to be grateful and celebrate that survival of someone who has come through a cancer journey. We all know (or are) people who have survived cancer. We know that the recipe for battling cancer goes beyond chemotherapy. We know of the resilience and grit required in the process: body, mind, and spirit. “Celebrate Life” is the mantra of NCSD, as this year’s campaign
The Health of Older Americans in 2022 – Risks from the Pandemic, Isolation, and Social Determinants
For millions of older people in America, health and well-being got worse in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Physical, mental and behavioral health took hits, depending on one’s living situation, social determinants of health risks, and even health plan, I write in the Medecision Liberate Health blog. In this essay on health disparities and equity for older adults, I weave together new data from, The United Health Foundation’s study on seniors’ health status in America’s Health Rankings for 2022 RAND and CMS research into seniors health disparities among Medicare Advantage
Social Determinants of Health Risks Challenge the Promise of Hospital-to-Home
In the wake of the pandemic and growing consumer preferences, the hospital-to-home movement is gaining traction among health systems. Amidst bullish forecasts for the promise of hospital-to-home discharges, the ability for many patients to make this migration would be a difficult bridge to cross. On the promising front, recent studies reviewed through a meta-analysis published in JAMA found that hospital-to-home programs can be clinically and cost-effective for inpatients discharged from hospital. Earlier this year, McKinsey addressed how “Care at Home” ecosystems can reshape the way health systems — and people — envision patient care. This
How Trust and Geopolitics Will Impact Health and Business – Edelman 2022 Trust Barometer at the World Economic Forum in Davos
When we think about the state of Trust in in mid-2022, there is some good news: Trust is rising (at least in democratic countries, while falling in autocratic ones). The bad news: the gap in Trust has dramatically widened between higher-income people compared with those earning lower-incomes, globally. And that gap is “tinder” that can be quickly sparked into a socio-political fire in countries around the world, Richard Edelman cautioned today when introducing the latest look at the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, focusing on geopolitics and business. We have never seen numbers like this
Making The Joy Choice for Our Health and Well-Being – a conversation with Michelle Segar
“Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once,” Paulo Coelho wrote in his novel, The Winner Stands Alone. Coelho is talking about the all-too-human condition of facing situations that are unplanned which test our patience, resilience, and grit. Our best-laid plans go awry – especially those for healthy behaviors, like exercising and eating well. Enter Michelle Segar, PhD, MPH, MS, NIH-funded researcher at the University of Michigan, sustainable-behavior-change expert, and health coach. Michelle is our go-to sage for helping us
McKinsey’s Six Shifts To Add Life to Years — and One More to Consider
People spend one-half of their lives in “less-than-good health,” we learn early in the paper, Adding years to life and life to years from the McKinsey Health Institute. In this data-rich essay, the McKinsey team at MHI sets out an agenda that could help us add 45 billion extra years of higher-quality life equal to an average of six years per person (depending on your country and population demographics). The first graphic from the report illustrates four dimensions of health and the factors underneath each of them that can bolster or diminish our well-being: personal behaviors (such as sleep and diet),
Can a Food-As-Medicine App Extend Chronic Health Management at the Grocery Store?
Foogal, a recipe app designed to support patients’ healthy cooking and eating, launched on 24th March. In its initial version, Foogal addresses several specific diet paradigms: for patients demanding a wellness protocol, an autoimmune protocol, or wanting to address insulin resistance. Foogal got my attention via a tweet @FoogalApp on 25th March. The snippet featured a photo of a delectable Salad Lyonnaise, one of my favorite things to eat, which adds a soft-cooked egg and bacon lardons to the greens for an easy light (and delicious!) meal. Foogal was developed by Todd Knobel, who has worked in law, in plastics,
Go Local and Go Beyond Medical Care: What Hospitals, Health Plans, and Pharma Can Do to Rebuild Trust
Without trust, people do not engage with health care providers, health plans, or life science companies….nor do many people accept “science fact.” I explore the sad state of Trust and Health Care. published in the Medecision Liberate Health blog, with a positive and constructive call-to-action for health care industry stakeholders to consider in re-building this basic driver of well-being. That is, trust as a determinant of health. Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer came out in January 2022, coinciding as it annually does with the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Every year, WEF convenes the world’s biggest thinkers to wrestle with the
How Social Media Can Get Public Health So Wrong
This week, public health truths have collided with social media, the infodemic, and health citizenship. First, I read in Becker’s Health IT on February 16 that the peer-reviewed policy journal Health Affairs was prevented by a social media outlet from promoting its February 2022 issue themed “Racism and Health.” The company said the topic was too controversial to feature in this moment. “Google and Twitter are blocking its paid media ads to promote the content, flagging racism as ‘sensitive content,'” Molly Gamble explained in Becker’s. I myself used the blogging platform you’re on now to promote the February ’22 issue of
How Twitter Revealed Consumer Health Care Trends in the Pandemic
During the pandemic, millions of people connected with Twitter to share thoughts and feelings about the pandemic…and their health. Three mega-trends bubbled up on the platform for health — telemedicine and virtual care, broadband access, and mental health, discussed in a Birdseye Report Industry Deep Dive into Health from Brandwatch, partnering with Twitter. For this report, Brandwatch utilized only English-language public Twitter data. Brandwatch collated and analyzed tweets between January 1st 2019 and November 20 2021, that mentioned any of the following phrases: telemedicine, telehealth, virtual care, digital medicine, digimedicine, mental health, doom scrolling, trauma dumping, and meeting fatigue. Tweets
From Better for Me to Better for “We” — NielsenIQ’s New Consumer Hierarchy of Health
People around the world have made health a “proactive priority,” most important to live a longer, healthier life, to avoid preventable diseases, to protect against disease, and to look and feel healthier, according to NielsenIQ’s latest health and wellness report. As the triangle here illustrates, NielsenIQ has turned Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs upside down, shifting protective and physical needs to the top rung and altruistic — the “me-to-we” ethos — at the base. Note the translations of these needs, on the ride, into the “care” flows — moving from urgent care down to self-care, preventive care, innovative care, and selfless
The Trust Deficit Is Bad for Health: A Health/Care Lens on the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer
“Health is the cornerstone to our core needs, thereby the cornerstone to trust.” So wrote Kirsty Graham, Global Leader of Sectors and Global Chair of Health at Edelman, in an essay explaining the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer. If it’s January, it must be time for the World Economic Forum in Davos, the annual setting for Edelman’s launch of the company’s Trust Barometer. While WEF is mostly virtual this year due to the pandemic, Edelman has released the survey of global citizens’ views on trust in institutions right on-time and in full and sobering detail. I welcome and dig into the
Genentech’s Look Into the Mirror of Health Inequities
In 2020, Genentech launched its first study into health inequities. The company spelled out their rationale to undertake this research very clearly: “Through our work pursuing groundbreaking science and developing medicines for people with life-threatening diseases, we consistently witness an underrepresentation of non-white patients in clinical research. We have understood inequities and disproportionate enrollment in clinical trials existed, but nowhere could we find if patients of color had been directly asked: ‘why?’ So, we undertook a landmark study to elevate the perspectives of these medically disenfranchised individuals and reveal how this long-standing inequity impacts their relationships with the healthcare system
Necessity is the Mother(board) – How COVID-19 Inspires Local Communities to Build Broadband
“The simple fact is that the federal and state governments are doing almost nothing to help people who have a broadband service available that partially meets their needs but abuses them with regular price hikes, spotty reliability, and poor customer service. Local governments will continue to step in to build better networks because communities have very few other options.” That “necessity is the mother” motivation to build broadband comes from Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). [FYI, Mitchell’s Twitter handle is @communitynets]. Mitchell is quoted in the story, New data
The Risk of Food and Nutrition Security in America – A Bipartisan Concern and Call-to-Action from the BPC
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated food insecurity in the U.S., a situation that was already challenging for millions of American families before the public health crisis emerged. While several Congressional and administrative actions were implemented in 2020 and the first half of 2021, the issue of food insecurity — defined as being unable to acquire enough food due to insufficient money or resources — remains a tragic aspect of daily living for many Americans — and especially for children who live in households where jobs have been lost and incomes reduced. Nutrition security has also been a health risk where people
#LoveThyNeighbor – A Faith-Based Call for Vaccination
The Catholic Health Association (CHA) is urging Americans to “love thy neighbor” by getting the COVID-19 vaccine, Sister Mary Haddad wrote in an editorial published in Modern Healthcare, published on September 3, 2021. Sister Mary is CEO and President of CHA. “Some may suggest that there are moral and religious concerns to receiving the COVID-19 vaccine,” Sister Mary observed. “We strongly affirm the position of the leaders of the Catholic Church: the vaccines are morally acceptable and getting vaccinated is “an act of love.” she asserted. CHA launched a portal on the act of love, featuring lots of science-based articles
Our Pandemic Lessons: Listening to Michael Dowling – a #HIMSS21 Wrap-Up
“We don’t un-learn,” Dr. Amy Abernethy asserted as she shared her pandemic perspectives on a panel with 2 other former U.S. health policy and regulatory leaders. The three spoke about navigating compliance (think: regulations and reimbursement) in an uncertain world. An uncertain world is our workplace in the health/care ecosystem, globally, in this moment. So to give us some comfort in our collective foxhole, my last post for this week of immersion in #HIMSS21 is based on the keynote speech of Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health. Dowling keynoted on the theme of “Leading for the Future,” sharing his lessons
The Digital Home: A Platform for Health, via Deloitte and the COVID-19 “Stress Test”
Wherever you live in the world touched by the coronavirus pandemic, you felt (and were) stress-tested. Both you were, and your home was as well. In this year’s 2021 annual report by Deloitte into Connectivity & Mobile Trends, their report details How the pandemic has stress-tested the crowded digital home. This analysis was done, as it is every year, by the Deloitte Center for Technology, Media & Telecommunications. Deloitte’s Center commissioned an online survey among 2,009 U.S. consumers to gauge five generations of peoples’ perspectives on connected life in the context of COVID. The report covers the various life-flows of
Trust in Healthcare is Under Stress in the US and Globally, Edelman Finds
You’re stressed, I’m stressed; most of us have felt stress in the COVID-19 era which began in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2020. Nearly eighteen months later, a 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer update finds that consumers’ trust in the health care industry is under stress, too — in the U.S. and around the world. The first chart from the Edelman health care update demonstrates that in most countries polled, health citizens’ trust in health care was buoyed in the first five months of 2020 (January through May): up 18 points in the U.S., 14 points in Canada and
And the Oscar Goes To….Power to the Patients!
Health care has increased its role in popular culture over the years. In movies in particular, we’ve seen health care costs and hassles play featured in plotlines in As Good as it Gets [theme: health insurance coverage], M*A*S*H [war and its medical impacts are hell], and Philadelphia [HIV/AIDS in the era of The Band Played On], among dozens of others. And this year’s Oscar winner for leading actor, Anthony Hopkins, played The Father, who with his family is dealing with dementia. [The film, by the way, garnered six nominations and won two]. When I say “Oscar” here on the Health
A Year Into COVID19, Mental Health Impacts Heavier on Moms Than Dads in America
In the summer of 2020, four months into the pandemic, one-half of people living in the U.S. felt worry or stress related to the coronavirus that had a negative impact on their mental health. Over a year into the COVID-19 in America, nearly one-half of people still have negative mental health impacts due to the coronavirus, based on research from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) published in their April 2021 update on the mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Note the line in the bar chart from the study has flat-lined and settled at just about 50% of U.S.
How Young People Are Using Digital Tools to Help Deal with Mental Health
After a year of living with and “in” the coronavirus pandemic, younger people in the U.S. have had to deal with over twelve months of quarantine and lockdown, going to school remotely from home, and distancing from friends. For most young people, the public health crisis has been more about that social distancing from friends, a collective sense of isolation, and mental and behavioral health impacts. These dynamics and these young health citizens’ coping mechanisms are captured in the report, Coping with COVID-19: How Young People Use Digital Media to Manage Their Mental Health. Three organizations collaborated to conduct and
The Ongoing Reality of COVID-19 – My Conversation with Dr. Michael Osterholm at SXSW
“So close and yet so far” feels like the right phrase to use a year after the World Health Organization used the “P-word,” “pandemic,” to describe the coronavirus’s impact on public health, globally. One year and over 550,000 COVID-related deaths in the U.S. later, we face a New Reality that Dr. Michael Osterholm and I are brainstorming today at the 2021 South-by-Southwest Festival. Usually held live and very up-close-and-personally crowded in Austin, Texas, this year we are all virtual — including the film, music, and interactive festivals alike. While I regret to not be in the same room as Dr.
A BA Degree as Prescription for a Longer Life – Update on Deaths of Despair from Deaton and Case
“Without a four-year college diploma, it is increasingly difficult to build a meaningful and successful life in the United States,” according to an essay in PNAS, Life expectancy in adulthood is falling for those without a BA degree, but as educational gaps have widened, racial gaps have narrowed by Anne Case and Angus Deaton. Case and Deaton have done extensive research on the phenomenon of Deaths of Despair, the growing epidemic of mortality among people due to accidents, drug overdoses, and suicide. Case and Deaton wrote the book on Deaths of Despair (detailed here in Health Populi), Case and Deaton
I'm once again pretty gobsmackingly happy to have been named a judge for the 2026 CES Innovation Awards, focusing on digital health, longevity, and fitness. Preceding every year's global conference, CES receives hundreds of applications from innovators around the world building tech-based solutions to big challenges. So glad to be part of this annual initiative to see what global health-tech pioneers are cooking up to address and scale the health and well-being of fellow health citizens, globally.
You can see the results of the Digital Health Awardees here on the #CES2026 website.
Stay tuned to Health Populi in early January as I'll be attending Media Days and meeting with innovators in digital health, longevity, and the home-for-health during CES 2026 in Las Vegas. I'll be at the conference for an entire week meeting with clients and exhibitors at the biggest-meeting-of-the-year on consumer-facing technology. I'll be reporting daily from Vegas here in the blog, sharing with you insights about the latest breakthroughs, products, and services that enable people to manage health, well-being, and medical issues in their own hands and homes.
Jane collaborated on Robin Strongin's Health Dame webcast to discuss Halle Tecco's new book, Massively Better Healthcare, due out in early 2026. We brainstormed with Maven Founder Kate Ryder and the company's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Neel Shah about the state of U.S. healthcare and solutions not just to tweak at the margins but to "massively" improve health care delivery, financing, outcomes, and equity in America. It was a delightful, enlightening conversation -- I hope you'll check it out.