Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

From Mayo Clinic’s Transform 2010 Conference: How Sick Are Our “Healthy” School Lunches?

Mrs. QAppearing as a Second Life 3D virtual-world avatar at Mayo Clinic’s “Transform 2010” symposium (watch the video here), Mrs. Q — a teacher and the anonymous author of the blog “Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project” — told the story of how her unique health mission has come to be. She’s determined to help people understand just how sick our “healthy” school lunches really are.

Mrs. Q has sparked the interest of child health advocates around the country. Thanks to programs like First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move Initiative” and Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution,” the nation is paying more attention to childhood obesity and school lunch reform.

Mrs. Q’s blog was started because of her own experiences with school meals after she ate the food prepared at school because she forgot her lunch at home. She keeps her identity a secret due to fear of losing her teaching job. Read more »

Patient Safety Video: “Hand Hygiene Saves Lives”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has produced a patient safety video about the importance of handwashing for hospital patients and their healthcare providers. The instructional piece entitled “Hand Hygiene Saves Lives” is available for hospitals to offer their newly-admitted patients. I think everyone should watch and learn:

Source: CDC-TV

“Killer” Grand Rounds From Down Under

Grand RoundsBetter Health’s Grand Rounds this week is hosted by the ever-so-crafty Life in the Fast Lane team of Australian physicians at the Utopian College of Emergency for Medicine.

These docs “take great pleasure in sharing their medical experiences, clinical knowledge and insights into waiting-room medicine with health-conscious technophiles to facilitate the learning process by providing diverse and hopefully entertaining reading material.” It’s always worth a read (and a chuckle), no doubt.

With the theme of “Killer Posts” (just a hint — hate to blow the surprise), this edition of Grand Rounds is sure to educate in more ways than one! Experience it HERE.

Public Health: What’s Digital Got To Do With It?

Better Health’s Dr. Val Jones recently expert-moderated TogoRun’s Digital Capital Week event entitled “Public Health: What’s Digital Got to Do With It?” featuring panelists Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Maya Linson of the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, and Erin Enke of TogoRun. A capacity crowd in attendance at the Pew Research Center and another group following on Twitter sparked a vibrant online discussion of how health institutions are using social media and how digital innovation is improving public health:

A conversation with Maya Linson about “Public Hospitals and the Social Media Imperative” followed via podcast: 

SOURCE: Unleashed: The Health + Communications Blog

A Real “American Idol”

In honor of Memorial Day, from the editorial cartoons of Joe Heller:

Real American Idol

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

Read more »

How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

Read more »

The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

Read more »

Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles