03/09/10
03/02/10
Special Contributor | Complexity in Health Care Can’t Be a Vice
Health care reform is testing the United State’s capacity to address big issues and has highlighted glaring flaws in the legislative process. What’s clear by now is that it’s tough to boil health care policy down into concise talking points and it’s nearly impossible to sell sensible reforms politically. This is a plague on all our houses. Ultimately, policy proposals that will reduce cost growth, expand access, and improve quality are bound to be complex. And what’s been evident over the last year is that in our current political climate, ...02/23/10
“Viewpoints” | The Spread of Obesity in Developing and Transitional Countries
Obesity is increasingly becoming an epidemic in industrialized nations, particularly in the U.S. where one out of every three adults is obese. However, the U.S. is not alone in this emerging public health crisis. Increasingly, transitional nations – which have long fought to simply maintain adequate nutrition among their populations – are being forced to confront a rising tide of obesity among certain sectors of their populations. I became interested in the rise of obesity in developing and transitional countries during my doctoral work at Indiana University. I was trained as ...02/16/10
Special Contributor | Will Nutrition Labels on Menus Make America Healthy, Wealthy, and Svelte?
One perverse side effect of the stalled national health reform legislation is that popular, commonsense provisions tucked in the bills get stuck too. That includes the restaurant menu labeling requirement, which has support from Democrats; Republicans; the public health community; and, more recently, even the fast-food industry. I got sort of partial to this rule myself, particularly after I started writing about this topic and did a little online nutritional sleuthing about what I grab for lunch on busy days and what I feed my kids on road trips to the ...02/09/10
Just How Do We Define a “Culture of Health”?
What determines the health of nations? The answer is not clear: individual behaviors may seem dominant but, on closer inspection, yield to a complex interplay of genetics; economic constraints; cultural norms; social interactions; one’s prenatal environment; and many other interrelated, sometimes time-delayed, physically distant factors. Given this conundrum, a useful approach is an ecological perspective. Consider individuals nested within many overlapping, sometimes competing, sometimes supporting systems. Taken together, these systems form a culture of health in which each of us is embedded. Our new research project at Altarum Institute on ...02/01/10




Zack Cooper
Serena Vinter
Joanne Kenen