Tag: Preventive Lifestyle

Notes & Links July 16, 2013

Jenny, Jenny, oh Jenny

David Kroll has a wonderful piece in Forbes titled “Jenny McCarthy Is A Dangerous Medical Celebrity” As you can guess from the title is shakes the reality of allowing someone with “Mommy instincts” to present medical and scientific advice as if it was evidence based medicine. Clearly stating opinion vs. evidence is critical to helping learner acquire knowledge and make life critical decisions.

Giving McCarthy an unrestricted and highly-visible platform to continue her record of pseudoscience views on issues critical to child health is both irresponsible and dangerous.

We Know Cost Kills People

“Cost Prevents People from Seeking Preventive Healthcare” is posted on HealthPopuli It reviews a TeleVox survey of over 1,015 US adults titled “A Call for Change: How Adopting a Preventive Lifestyle Can Ensure a Healthy Future for More Americans” 

Some of the data HealthPopuli pulls  

  • Only 1 in 3 people in he US have spoken with their personal doctors about their medical history and risk factors for diseases 
  • Only 33% have had cholesterol checks
  • In the past two years, only 26% of people have been screened for diabetes
  • She ends with:

Making prevention cool, beautiful, smart – whatever motivates the prevention-poor patient – is the must-do for health plans, providers, payors (employers, unions and government health insurance sponsors). And to do that requires asking people the very question: what will lead you to actually seek prevention. 

Notes & Links July 12, 2013

Jane at Health Populi takes a look at two published studies examining the state of America’s health. The first is the research from JAMA “The State of US Health, 1990-2010: Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors” The second is from NEJM written by Victor Fuchs “The Gross Domestic Product and Health Care Spending”

She ends with

“While the ACA nods to prevention and primary care, it doesn’t go nearly far enough into aspects of health reform that can impact, at scale, public health to move Americans above position #27 in the world’s mortality table.” 

I wonder if all the small changes in healthcare, social media, patient/HCP engagement, internet, etc. will scale enough? 

Using zombies to teach science. Makes perfect sense to me. Tara C. Smith notes that zombies are one hot topic and cultural cornerstone today with kids. And I would add adults as well. 

“And the great thing is that these kids are *already experts* on the subject matter. They don’t have to learn about the epidemiology of a particular microbe to understand disease transmission and prevention, because they already know more than most of the adults do on the epidemiology of zombie diseases–the key is to get them to use that knowledge and broaden their thinking into various “what if” situations that they’re able to talk out and put pieces together.”

This speaks to me about teaching and making the uptake of knowledge linked to the imagination especially with kids. 

My pal Scott put me on to this video ad by Ikea. Somewhat disturbing and curious to it’s strategic position. Basically the video looks at a girl who’s doll house comes alive with mom, son, dog, and has wonderful Ikea product placements. But it is worth the view. 

“that Ikea’s version of a family doesn’t necessitate a happily married mom and dad, there’s something unquestionably off-putting about the entire narrative—especially considering it’s supposedly taking place in a child’s imagination.”