I first heard about the female condom in 2006. I was in Seattle to see what was happening at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One of the many impressive projects it was supporting was at PATH, a non-profit organization that was developing and promoting a new female condom. The sad, age-old reason: the health of millions of women around the world is threatened by irresponsible men. Read more »
If you want to improve the health of Americans, why not look around the world for places where people live the longest, healthiest lives and try to copy whatever it is they’re doing? That’s exactly what Dan Buettner has done. He is the author of The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.
Examples of areas he calls “blue zones” are Sardinia, Okinawa, Costa Rica (the Nicoya Peninsula), Ikaria (a Greek island), and Loma Linda, California. Things residents have in common include exercising regularly, eating more vegetables and less meat, engaging in social networking, and having a sense of purpose. Read more »
February is National Heart Disease Awareness Month, and so I invited Dr. Bill Kussmaul to make me aware of some of the hottest controversies in cardiology. His tips and insights are invaluable to busy primary care physicians looking for the bottom line on thorny issues. Dr. Kussmaul is the Associate Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at Hahneman Hospital in Philadelphia and an Associate Editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine. You can listen to our conversation or read my transcript below:
[Audio:https://getbetterhealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/billkussmaul.mp3]
Controversy #1: Cholesterol and Statin Therapy
Dr. Val: Who should receive high-dose statin therapy? Read more »
Why aren’t Americans in the streets, demanding reform of a health care system that is providing inadequate care for millions, wildly inefficient, and gradually bankrupting our country? A major reason: proponents of reform have lost control over the message because people think it’s too complicated to understand. Confused about important details of the proposals, the public is susceptible to misrepresentations by opponents. Read more »
Do you advertise on your social networks? You might not think that you do, but every time you tweet or update your status on Facebook or post a picture to Flickr, you’re advertising – perhaps not with commercial or self-promotional intent, but you are advertising something: an item of news, a humorous post or a moment from your vacation. I don’t believe that Advertising is bad; but there is bad advertising, the kind that pointlessly interrupts and annoys and leads to no action.
As the Web expands and evolves from a tangle of static web pages towards social and real time streams, Advertising will need to evolve into a suppler and friendlier animal. Google may have perfected Advertising on the traditional web platform, but the door is open to new players who can socialize advertising. It’s not an easy task: the bull’s eye of targeting customers is getting tinier everyday. Enter MyLikes, a start up which has taken on the task of helping advertisers reach their base. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*
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