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“Viewpoints” | Seeking Solutions From IT Instead of From People

By: David Kibbe

When I first came to “Health 2.0” and joined ranks with folks who were leading this charge, it was because I was so thoroughly discouraged by the realm of health information technology for physicians and hospitals and disappointed with both the vendors of electronic health record technology and most of their customers. I saw what was happening on the consumer and patient side of health IT as leapfrogging over the tired, staid, and expensive proprietary client-server apps that were about the only thing in that marketplace. Health 2.0 was an extension ...

Special Contributor | Complexity in Health Care Can’t Be a Vice

By: Zack Cooper

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, ...

“Viewpoints” | The Spread of Obesity in Developing and Transitional Countries

By: Lisa Pawloski

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 ...

Special Contributor | Will Nutrition Labels on Menus Make America Healthy, Wealthy, and Svelte?

By: Joanne Kenen

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 ...

Just How Do We Define a “Culture of Health”?

By: Stanley Chin

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 ...

Special Contributor | The Challenge of Monopolies in U.S. Health Care — England May Help Illustrate the Solution

By: Zack Cooper

The British National Health Service (NHS) and the U.S. health system are popularly regarded as two unrelated health systems with different values, different virtues, and different vices. However, despite their differences, these two health systems have historically shared a common problem: Large, seemingly immovable monopolies have slowed innovation and thwarted improvements in efficiency. And contrary to some of the stereotypes about the NHS, policymakers in the U.K. have had more success breaking up monopolies by increasing competition than has been achieved in the U.S.   In the U.S., private-sector insurers hold ...