A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

The top healthiest eating communities tend to circle the perimeter of the map of the lower 48 U.S. states. In these towns, more than 72% of health citizens report healthy eating. These areas are located in California, Florida, and Massachusetts, among others. Areas with the lowest rates of healthy eating are concentrated generally south of the Mason-Dixon Line, in places like Arkansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi, and other states. In these places, fewer than 57% of people eat healthy. Eating healthy foods in moderation is a mighty contributor to personal and public health, discussed in the report, State of American Well-Being

The American Psychological Association reports that Americans are experiencing greater levels of stress in 2017 for the first time since initiating the Stress in America Survey ten years ago in 2007. This is a statistically significant finding, APA calculated. The member psychologists of the American Psychological Association (APA) began to report that patients were coming to appointments increasingly anxious about the 2016 Presidential election. So the APA polled U.S. adults on politics for the first time in ten years of conducting the Stress in America survey. Two-thirds of Americans are stressed and/or anxious about the future of the nation, and

I’m at CES 2017 in Las Vegas all this week looking for signs of health in new technology announcements. While it’s no surprise there are hundreds of new and new-and-improved digital health innovations on the exhibition floor, you can look beyond those aisles to other companies who are new entrants in health. Arguably, these companies can bolster peoples’ health at least as much as activity tracking and calorie counting. Here are five examples I wrote about in my Huffington Post column yesterday, The Social Determinants of Health Live At CES 2017: Safety – Liberty Mutual Nutrition – Terraillon Healthy Sex

This post was written to support the upcoming meeting of the PCHA, the Personal Connected Health Alliance, to be held 11-14 December 2016 at the Gaylord Hotel in greater Washington, DC. You can follow the events and social content via Twitter using the hashtag #Connect2Health. Have you visited your local Big Box, discount or consumer electronics store lately? You’ll find expanding shelf space for digital health technologies aimed squarely at consumers. 2017 promises even more of them, aimed at helping people accomplish health tasks once  performed in hospitals and by healthcare providers, or tasks not yet delivered in today’s healthcare

  1 in 3 consumers track health or fitness via an app, wearable technology, or smartwatch, according to GfK’s global survey on Health and fitness tracking published in September 2016. The key reasons people monitor health or fitness are to maintain or improve physical condition/fitness (for 55%) and to motivate oneself to exercise (for 50%), across the 16 countries GfK surveyed. Improving energy level, feeling motivated to eat and drink more healthfully, improving sleep, making tracking part of a daily routine, losing weight, and being more productive were cited as reasons to health-track by at least one-fourth of health citizens

There are many signposts in the marketplace pointing the way toward the new retail health/care for consumers. They include: Food and exercise as the new medicine Loneliness as the new smoking as a health risk Prevention as the new sustainability Home as the new long-term care locus Balancing humanity and technology, the analog and the digital, and Retail as a center of the new healthcare ecosystem. Read more about the 7 Signs of the Retail Health Revolution,  published by Drug Store News. This graphic-rich publication was based on a speech I gave at a recent retail health summit convened with healthcare’s

“Work is the second most common source of stress, just behind financial worries,” introduces The Business of Healthy Employees report from Virgin Pulse, the company’s 2016 survey of workplace health priorities published this week. Virgin Pulse collaborated with Workforce magazine, polling 908 employers and 1,818 employees about employer-sponsored health care, workers’ health habits, and wellness benefit trends. Workplace wellness programs are becoming more holistic, integrating a traditional physical wellness focus with mental, social, emotional and financial dimensions for 3 in 4 employers. Wearable technology is playing a growing role in the benefit package and companies’ cultures of health, as well

The top health-related activities among U.S. adults include routinely taking vitamins and supplements, and prescription medicines, according to Frost & Sullivan’s report, Are We Engaged Yet? Their response to the titular question lies in in the subtitle: “US consumers appear confused or ambivalent about what it means to be proactive or engaged in their health.” 1 in 2 U.S. adults says they’re “somewhat engaged” in their healthcare, according to Reenita Das’s write-up on the study in Forbes magazine. She notes that: Consumers with higher incomes have more confidence in their access to health care services and quality of care Budget-constrained consumer

Financial stress impacts health, relationships, and work productivity and attendance for employees in the U.S. It’s the American worker’s trifecta, a way of life for a growing proportion of people in the U.S. PwC’s 2016 Employee Financial Wellness Survey for 2016 illustrates the reality of fiscally-challenged working women and men that’s a national epidemic. Some of the signs of the financial un-wellness malaise are that, in 2016: 40% of employees find it difficult to meet their household expenses on time each month 51% of employees consistently carry balances on their credit cards (with a large increase here among Baby Boomers

People with anxiety, depression, interpersonal challenges, and substance abuse go to work every day. Together, these factors erode the mental health and wellbeing of workers, and this negatively impacts companies’ productivity, workplace morale, and profitability. Employers are increasingly taking notice of their role in promoting mental health on-the-job, a trend captured in the report Promoting Mental Well-being: Addressing Worker Stress and Psychosocial Risks, an international survey of employers published in May 2015 by Buck Consultants, part of Xerox. The survey polled 439 employers in 31 countries, and the report focuses on the results in four of those nations: Brazil, Singapore, the

“Disruption” is a well-used word these days in business and, in the past few years, in the health care business. That’s because there’s a general consensus that the U.S. health care system is broken. “System” is a word that I shouldn’t use as my friend J.D. Kleinke smartly argued that it’s that lack of system-ness that makes using the phrase “health care system” an Oxymoron. The fragmented health care environment creates innumerable pain points when accessing, receiving, and paying for services. And it’s women who feel so much of that pain. In that context, I’m gratified and humbled to be one

“Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it,” Lily Tomlin once quipped. Perhaps in 2014, America is the land of stress because we’re all so in touch with reality. THINK: reality TV, social networks as the new confessional, news channeling 24×7, and a world of too much TMI. So no surprise, then, that one-half of the people in the U.S. have had a major stressful event or experience in the last year. And health tops the list of stressful events in This American Life in the forms of illness and disease (among 27% of people)

Of 100 broad-based trends to expect in 2014, most relate in some way to health. I’ve reviewed every one of the 100 forecast points in JWT’s 100 Things to Watch in 2014 report, and it seems Health is Everywhere. Let me point out many, which I’ve allocated to health-ified buckets (note that JWT organizes the list of 100 by alphabet, from “A” to “Z,” so they are not in any prioritized or strategic order). The most direct-health impacting bucket of trends are those in health tech. These include E-cigarette regulation (#35), Glassware (#42), Haptic technology (#46), Needle-free vaccines (#64), Oculus Rift (#65), OTT TV (#66), Telediagnostics

While working people in the U.S. are feeling better about the nation’s economy, Americans aren’t putting much money into savings for retirement. The reasons for this are many, but above all is what Mercer calls “the specter of health care costs in retirement” in the Mercer Workplace Survey for 2013. In addition to peoples’ concerns about future health care costs, reasons for not putting money away for the future include flat personal income, slow economic growth and financial literacy challenges around how much 401(k) savings can be tax-deferred. On the slow economic growth perception, Mercer found that, on the upside, people

There’s an issue that doctors and patients don’t discuss that’s among the most important contributors to ill health: it’s money, and it’s something Alexandra Drane calls an “Unmentionable.” Alex, Founder, Chief Visionary, and Board Chair at Eliza Corporation, coined Unmentionables as those aspects of daily living which everyone deals with, but few like to talk about: like sex (whether too much, too little), drugs (abusing), drinking (too much), toileting problems (such as incontinence or pooping problems), sleep trouble, and caring for others (not ourselves so much). These daily life challenges can negatively impact health, with financial stress being one of