HealthyConcerns.com

Great ongoing resource for health policy information
I happen to be a Kaiser patient, and also happen to think their model is generally a good one. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a site where they are centralizing information about health policy. Not just domestic health policy, but global health facts and policy as well:

http://globalhealth.kff.org/

Wow, I finally feel like the Jetsons are here: Artificial pancreas in the works

Thanks to Amy Tenderich from Diabetes Mine for doing a thorough job reporting on the recently announced partnership between the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and a J&J company that makes insulin pumps and the like. Their goal? To create an artificial pancreas for Diabetes patients that can be ready for market within something like four years!

It's fascinating to read the details. 

It's not that this pancreas will create insulin...there will still be a need to have some kind of patch/pump system to provide the insulin, but the "pancreas" would monitor levels and dispense in an automated fashion.

Read the whole post, so much information.

It may not be a hovercraft, but it feels like the future to me!

Kevin MD's top links for 2009: I think this shows the power of Google

Kevin MD is one of the most popular, prolific and comprehensive MedBlogs out there. Multiple posts per day cover just about every piece of medical news out there.

So, I read with interest his list of his Top 13 most popular blog posts of 2009.

The tally:

• Three about Michael Jackson
• Three about swine flu
• One about the Octomom
• One about Jett Travolta
• One about the Brazilian model who died from sepsis

So, six of thirteen about celebrity death and another three about swine flue, admittedly a hot topic. Given that, I'm guessing a whole lot of hits come from Google search.

I find it somewhat sad that there was only one post about health care reform out of the whole Top 13. 

In general I think the Internet has made us smarter, more connected, more informed, more able to express ourselves. But it's also made us more able to pursue every last morsel of information about inconsequential things.

And I don't mean anyone's death or birth is inconsequential, but neither the Octomom nor Michael Jackson have impact on our individual lives...not the way health care does.

I wish the traffic reflected it.

Two quick links about health care reform

Was relatively surprised to see Kevin MD state that, in the end, he would vote for the health care reform bill before the Senate. [Note, the post was written on 12/21, and it didn't pass until 12/24, so I'm not exactly clear on what changes may have been made between the 21st and 24th, and if that would impact his opinion. Only surprised because Kevin strikes me as a basically conservative guy. His post is long, thoughtful, takes a look at both sides and brings some different perspectives to the table. Like how about this one: 

And, as I wrote earlier this year in the USA Today, medical malpracticeneeds to be reformed for the patient’s sake, not the doctors’.

Of course, he's getting mostly slammed in his comments. By people who'd rather be condescending and dismissive than actually address points with data or citations of any kind. 

Read his post. And read the comments too, so you can know what the latest talking points are on the side of the divide.

And my second link is another example of all hat no cattle, or whatever that phrase is.

In the post Warning: Graphic Health Politics, GetBetterHealth examines a graph originally published on the National Geographic blog. Some are using the graph to draw the conclusion that countries with public health or universal care or single-payer get more bang for their health care buck than we do. And the author of the post disagrees that this conclusion can be drawn.

It's a really interesting post, yes, and certainly brings up some outliers. Or exceptions to the rule. And then questions whether there are more outliers than not. More exceptions than rules.

But I kind of wish he'd offer some answers...or draw some alternative conclusions. 

What DOES the graph tell us? That's my question, and it goes unanswered for now.

University backs down, but I just can't stand not commenting

So a few weeks ago, via BlogHer, I learned of an historically black college, Lincoln University, that was introducing a new and shocking graduation requirement: If a student is tested and has a BMI over 30, they'll need to take a course on health/fitness to graduate.

BlogHer's post listed numerous rational questions that had come up on the online version of the school's on student newspaper, the Lincolnian:

• Why is the university focusing solely on BMI and physical education, when its cafeteria could be offering better-quality, fresher, organic food to its students?
• Does the university really want to lose bright, motivated students and prospective students who happen to have a BMI of 30 or higher?
• Why only target those who are declared obese based on the BMI, which is already a controversial way of measuring health?
• Why make high-BMI students pay for an extra credit hour, when students with a lower BMI do not have to do so?
• Why is the college not offering the same intervention to students with eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia?
• Is the college opening itself up to discrimination suits?

Amy Tuteur's post on Kevin MD is a scathing look at the policy, and asks several other rational questions:

• Why not have a class on substance abuse for binge drinkers, or on sexual health for those carrying STDs? Both of which cause a lot of immediate health issues...and not only for the student themselves, but for others they may encounter?
• And what, exactly, does obesity have to do with the kind of education colleges are purportedly offering to their students?

Personally, I had some other questions:

• If we grant that health is important enough to be a required class in college, why not have *everyone* required to take it. Surely plenty of people who are skinny in college hit about 35 and realize they can't indulge like they used to. Certainly nutrition and exercise are valuable subjects for all students?
• How about smokers? I mean if we're targeting behaviors that are unhealthy to students and those around them, isn't that an obvious one?
• What makes it OK to think a fat person is less deserving of or entitled to *academic advancement*? Because statistically they might be unhealthier. How big a leap is it to compare such ridiculous thinking to racist or sexist barriers to educational opportunity that used to be thrown up?

It's all kind of moot, because the University themselves realized that being accused of discrimination was not a position they wanted to be in, given their history and target student body.

But Ms. Tuteur agrees with something I blogged long ago: It's still OK to be anti-fat...the last socially acceptable "ism" around.

I went to the White House, and it was all because of health care

Mid-last year, we learned that Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama, would be attending BlogHer '09 for a brief amount of time. She was hoping to meet bloggers with health care stories to tell because the health care reform debate was really heating up. 

She had such a meeting with about 20 bloggers. Some of them blogged about ongoing health issues, like diabetes and cancer, every day...it was part of what their blogs were all about. Some of them weren't really health bloggers at all, but had a story to tell...about the time they were denied coverage, or the time their coverage was dropped, about the time they lost nearly everything because of health care costs.

Ever since that meeting at BlogHer '09 we have been working on a way to bring more information about women who blog and their passionate interest in all things political - even if many of them would never self-identify as political bloggers - to both sides of the aisle.

First we launched a joint community journalism initiative with the Sunlight Foundation and OpenCongress.org to hold conference calls between Congresspeople from both sides of the aisle and women who blog...again, women from both sides of the aisle. We held seven such conference calls. The archive of every call (including both written and audio transcripts) can be found here. You can hear what such folks as Speaker Pelosi (D-CA), Senator Gillibrand (D-NY) and Representative Rodgers (R-WA) have to say in response to direct questions from women who blog. 

Yesterday, BlogHer Political Director Erin Kotecki Vest and I did make that trek to Washington DC and presented the following data on women and social media to, first, Republican staffers on Capitol Hill, and then to Ms. Jarrett and other members of the team at the White House. Erin tells the story here, while I added a bit of color commentary here.

It all started with a conversation about Health. And that conversation is far from over...

BlogHer Goes to Washington

View more documents from ElisaCamahortPage.

File that under: I did not know that

So, I've never had a Flexible Spending Account, even back when I worked at a company that offered one. 

For those of you who don't know what an FSA is, here's a good article, but it's basically a way to set aside some of your income, pre-tax, to spend on health-releated expenditures throughout the year. As the article points out, though, it's a use or lose it kind of thing, and apparently a lot of folks leave money on the table! (One of the reasons I was always nervous to do it when it was available to me.

I was pointed to that article by a rep for CVS, and I was only intrigued to look because she listed a whole bunch of stuff you can purchase in a regular drugstore that are FSA-reimbursable that truly surprised me. I think if I had known that the following list was comprised of all FSA-eligible items, I might have felt differently about the FSA opportunity:

 

Cold and flu medications
Hand sanitizer
Medicine-cabinet staples like allergy medication, pain relievers, antacids, and cotton balls
First aid: First aid kits and the products that often fill them, such as bandages and antibiotic ointment
Sunscreens: Sunscreens over SPF 30 are typically included in FSA spending, just make sure it doesn’t include a self-tanner or moisturizer, which may exclude the product. 

Who knew? Not me. I buy all of the above, don't you? 

Then again, there's paperwork involved. Sigh. Trade-offs.

Health tips for geeks

It's hard for me to stick through reading one hundred of anything, but I did make it through this list: 100 Healthy Hacks for Tech and Gadget Geeks.

The tips I really need to pay attention to:

Ergonomics:
#3: Rest Your Eyes: Every 20 minutes or so, focus on an object that is at least 20 feet away.

Diet: (A bunch)
#13: Eat spinach and leafy greens
#19: More whole grains
#23: Pumpkin seed! (Yum, happy to see that tip!)
#29: Quinoa (I've been meaning to experiment with this high-protein grain)

Exercise:
Oh, let's just say I should do 'em all in this category!

Taking breaks: I don't think I'll be taking any cat naps at work any time soon, but I should:
#42: Get up once and hour
#44: Stretch

Check-ups: I'm good at doing this!

Web Tools:
#54: I already use The Daily Plate app (both online and for the iPhone), and love it...I just need to be more consistent about it.

iPhone Apps:
#70: I gotta try this one: Muscle Head and Neck System

Stress
#73: Make time for yourself

Sleep Hacks
#77: Wind down before bed
#80: Address anxiety (by writing down everything stressing you out before bed...I'm skeptical)

Boost Your Immunity
#84: Getting enough sleep is my obvious bugaboo

Daily Habits
#89: Get natural sunlight (I'm trying to do this to boost my Vitamin D)
#95: I admit it, I need to floss more!

Those are just a few of the tips that resonate with me, although lots more are on my list of way I try to be conscious of my health. For every single tip, there's a link to more info or recommendations about how to incorporate that tip into your life, so the post is a real treasure trove of info.

So, check out 100 Healthy Hacks for Tech and Gadget Geeks. and let me know what first couple of tips you're going to try?

The Quick Compose test

Cross posted at Elisa's Green Scene, since I did the same test to both blogs!

Right below this post is my first attempt to use Quick Compose. This seems to be Typepad's way of incorporating Status Updating (i.e. the kind of posting done in Twitter or Facebook) into one's blog.

There are two things that will probably keep me from using this all that regularly:

1. No titles or categories for your Quick post. It's really just the message. No headline. No ability to categorize (that I saw). So it interrupts the visual and formatting flow of your blog, providing less information that is, I think, required.

2. I may try it again, to see if you can post a hyperlink under text, but it didn't seem like it on first glance. It automatically converts any URl you enter as a hyperlink, but as per the test I did, that was a pretty long, gnarly URL. I would have preferred to put that link under text.

Now, it may encourage me to keep this blog a little more active by posting quick thoughts and links so easily.

But the bigger question, then, is this: Would that improve the quality of the blog. The beauty part of sharing ephemeral thoughts on Twitter is that they're just that: Ephemeral. Not too weighty. Fun, sure. Conversational, often. But without the conversational element, do those same thoughts hold up for a blog "post"?

Any of you using this feature? How? Why? Will you continue? What do your readers say?

Over at my personal blog, I review two current bestseller vegan cookbooks, The Conscious Cook and The Kind Diet (with bonus comparison to Skinny Bitch). Check it out: http://homepage.mac.com/elisa_camahort/iblog/C1023857155/E20091128093357/index.html (Also testing new Quick Compose feature on Typepad!)