Pink-icide: The Musical!
By · CommentsOK, the post title is total hyperbole.
But don’t you think that the non-profit fist-fight that Komen has become deserves at least a song or two, if not a full treatment by the “The Book of Mormon” boys Matt Stone and Trey Parker?
Maybe a musical episode on South Park? (Seriously, I can’t wait to see what Nancy Brinker looks like standing next to Cartman.)
Now that the furor has subsided, I have to say two things:
(c) bellesouthblogs.com
#1: Komen is not about ending breast cancer, it’s about continuing Pink Ribbon Culture.
I wrote about the dust-up from a branding perspective on brandchannel.com, and most of what I have to say is included there. Komen shifted from grassroots to corporate entity when it became successful enough to feel like it needed to unleash the legal hounds to protect “pink” and “for the cure” from use by other non-profits and causes. #fail.
#2: Sorry, kids, but we told you so a while ago.
Gayle Sulik in “Pink Ribbon Blues”, KomenWatch, Lawsuits for the Cure – many of us have been asking “WTF, Komen?” for a while now. We have something like an answer after the Komen/Karen Handel fiasco: they’re not interested in the mission any more, they’re all about the Komen brand.
If you’re looking to spend some money on a good cause, forget buying pink gear. Write a check to the Canary Foundation or the Cancer Research Institute. Your dollars have a higher degree of likelihood to go to research, not legal expenses.
Paula Deen + Diabetes = Missed Opportunity
By · CommentsPaula Deen did what every middle-aged woman who’s just been diagnosed with diabetes does: she went on the Today Show to announce that she’d still be cooking with plenty of butter, salt, and sugar. She’d just be practicing moderation.
Yeah, I’m kidding. About the Everywoman part, but not about the rest of it.
Photo credit: AP
To top it off, the Butter/Salt/Sugar Queen is also going to shill for Novo Nordisk, the maker of diabetes treatment medications.
There are so many things wrong with this picture, and this message, I honestly don’t know where to begin … but here goes.
After spending almost 30 years making and pushing foods that are literally gateway drugs to the insulin-dependency rehab zone, the Butter/Salt/Sugar Queen is now in the club herself. What a great chance for her to make a difference in the lives of the women she influences, and the families they prepare meals for.
But no. It’s ever so much more fun to push even more high fat/salt/sugar recipes … and the insulin to go with ‘em!
The diabetes epidemic in the US – and elsewhere in the developed world – started in the Wretched Excess ’80s, when restaurants took a page from the drive-thru playbook and started to super-size their portions. I remember the first time I noticed this, in a restaurant in the Washington DC suburbs that, among other things, served a heaping platter of cinnamon-butter rolls – huge things – as the bread basket. The portions for the entire menu were lucullan (look it up) taken to an extreme.
I fell for the con myself over the years, and have the GAS (Giant Ass Syndrome) to prove it. Luckily I’ve escaped the diabetes dx, and I work hard to make sure I keep it that way.
Humans are hard-wired to survive, like any other animal. The problem is that we’re Cro Magnons with smart phones and access to unlimited food options if we’re in a 1st-world country, and if we have any money at all. Even if we don’t have a lot of money, we can still buy all kinds of cheap food … that’s full of fat/salt/sugar, with little nutritional value at all. Sure tastes good and fills us up, though!
So if we’re surrounded by food, our reptilian hind-brains will say “Eat. It. ALL.” If it’s chock full of fat, salt, and sugar, and we eat it all, all the time, what do you think happens?
I recommend you ask Paula Deen. Who is now positioning herself as an “entertainer”, not someone that a person should pay attention to as a food expert.
I call bullshit, Paula. You’ve made a fortune inviting people to do as you do, and literally giving them step-by-step recipes for how to do exactly that. And now you’ll continue to push the fat, the salt, and the sugar out of one side of your mouth, while out of the other side you’re shilling for Novo Nordisk’s Diabetes in a New Light campaign?
Lying bullshit.
My food-porn crush Anthony Bourdain seems to agree in a conversation with Eater.com where he said, “When your signature dish is hamburger in between a doughnut, and you’ve been cheerfully selling this stuff knowing all along that you’ve got Type 2 diabetes… it’s in bad taste if nothing else.”
Werd, sir. Werd.
Calling all cancer warriors!
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(c) Kill the Beast LLC
There’s a wave building far out in the virtual sea. One that will drown out all other voices but those of 1 million cancer warriors marching on the National Mall in Washington DC on Sunday, June 3, 2012.
It’s an election year, kids. Let’s make enough noise to drown out what Calvin Trillin calls “the Sabbath Gasbags”, and get attention for our cause – one that touches every single American life in one way or another: cancer.
Let’s end it. Let’s put an end to death by cancer.
Here’s how to get on board the bus:
- Contact me
- Tell me how many warriors are in your group
- Plan on being in Richmond by Saturday, June 2 so you can ride to DC with us on the Team Plaid Warrior Express, or
- Meet us in DC on Sunday morning at our Early Detection Rally Roundup and join us as we storm the National Mall
The warriors who have kicked off this effort are:
(c) Kill the Beast
Donna Guinn Kaufman, head weapon-wielder at Kill the Beast who became a cancer warrior when diagnosed with breast cancer, while pregnant, a little over five years ago
(c) Pink Sky at Night
Jennifer Salmon Melton, author of Pink Sky at Night, a remembrance of her father’s battle with lung cancer
and also on board to help make the Warrior Wave bigger than anything Washington has ever seen is Jennifer Stauss Windrum, the leading light of WTF Lung Cancer, who you’ve heard me sing out about here before.
(c) WTF Lung Cancer
You on the bus? You better be!
COME ON!!!
I have … great news!
By · CommentsMy good friend Andrew Spong posted something today on his blog that I took one look at and said, “STEALING THIS!”
It’s not really theft if you give 100% credit, though, is it?
Andrew talks about his “I have” project, and uses this image to drive the point home:
thank you Andrew Spong!
What is the “I have” project, exactly? It’s crowd-sourcing health information in a way that makes it accessible and understandable to someone who’s just heard their name and [insert diagnosis here] in the same sentence. Patients, clinicians, experts of all stripes.
That he’s kicking this off with “I have breast cancer” has high impact for me, because I just marked my 4-year breast-cancer-versary yesterday.
That original diagnosis day – and before, and since – have been in turn marked by more Google searches than a human could count about breast cancer, oncology, radiation, lymphedema, lymphoma, lumpectomy, hormone suppression therapy, and a partridge in a pear tree.
This is incredibly important. I’m not a PhD (Andrew is), so I trust him to kick this off and make it fly. Really. Here are the goals for the project, as he states them:
What are the ‘I have’ project’s goals?
- To offer definitive answers to the question ‘I have [disease state]. What should I do?’
- To produce 1 page signpost summaries of the most reliable, relevant, patient-focused, outcomes-oriented, evidence-informed health information available for a wide range of diseases.
- To publish outputs compiled with SEO best practice in mind to be promoted through social networks and communities in an effective way with the intention that they should appear above the fold on the first page of Google results for the disease they address. Even the best health information is useless if it isn’t discoverable.
- To harness the expertise of healthcare professionals, patients and curators in co-creating and sharing the very best health information available for the disease states addressed by each document concerning treating and/or managing of the disease, living with the disease, and learning about the disease.
I’ve added a few points to the Google doc that’s collecting “I have breast cancer” insights and info. If you have anything to share: DO IT.
Let’s crowd-source the Cancer Troll right outta business.
GO!
From the “Who knew?” desk here at C4C Enterprises
By · CommentsI read a lot. I read a lot of healthcare-tech stories, since what will save healthcare in the US (and everywhere else) is technology that eases and facilitates communication between clinicians and patients, clinicians and clinicians, and patients and patients.
A virtuous cycle of open communication, where individual patient data is secure from viewing by anyone who isn’t the patient or a clinician directly involved in the care of that patient. Where payers have to get permission to see patient health and treatment data that they’re not actually paying for.
One of the outlets I read pretty consistently is Fierce Healthcare and Fierce Health IT. The FierceMarkets media network has a pretty deep bench on a variety of topics, and I personally trust media outlets who are transparent about what they do, why they do it, and who’s doing it for them. As opposed to, say, anything that Rupert Murdoch has a hand in.
But I digress (I am REALLY good at digressing). On to the “who knew?” portion of our program:
Who knew that patient satisfaction was linked to a smooth billing process? Actually, I’m betting that most patients know this. The people who still don’t really understand this are payers and many hospitals. There’s hope, though, as long as they actually pay attention to survey results like this.
Who knew that working long hours led to a greater incidence of medical errors? Talk about breaking news! Not. Anyone who’s ever pulled an all-nighter knows that your IQ falls in direct proportion to the number of hours you’ve been awake. Most of us stopped pulling all-nighters once we were out of college. For doctors and other medical professionals, not recognizing that they become dumber than a bag of hair once they’ve been on the clock for more than 12 hours is the biggest mistake they can make. And the hospital schedules that require them to work these kind of shifts? Dumber than a bag of hair as well.
Who knew that making patients sign gag orders was a bad idea? The Medical Justice League .. um .. Medical Justice *Services* provided doctors and hospitals with blanket gag orders that they were to require patients to sign, saying that they wouldn’t make any negative comments online about the practice/hospital/whatever. I’m all for full-disclosure, in both directions, when it comes to healthcare services. Or any other services, for that matter. However, requiring what’s essentially a surrender of one’s 1st Amendment rights is … crazy? Dumb? Actionable? All of the above, I think.
What did YOU discover in the “who knew?” healthcare category this year? Comments are open – let ‘er rip!
More motion on mobile health
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I spent a day last week at Rutgers University in the company of some heavy hitters in mobile healthcare. I’ll be posting a full report soon on Disruptive Women in Health Care, but in the meantime, here are some highlights:
- “More people have mobile phones than have toothbrushes,” said Tom Wheeler of the mHealth Alliance (not good news if you get stuck in an elevator or on a subway with someone in the only-mobile-phone group)
- “Delight drives change” was an observation made by Dr. Gopal K. Chopra, the founder of pingmd, about what will drive successful mhealth ideas
- mHealth Gazelles was a phrase used (coined?) by Ernst & Young Entrepreneur in Residence David Shrier in his presentation about how venture capital can empower the growth of mHealth
- “Technology is the only path away from the drive off the cliff.” That was one of Joe Carr’s comments (he’s the CIO of the NJ Hospital Assn.) during a panel discussion about the market-readiness of mHealth – he was referring to the fact that healthcare costs are literally bankrupting the nation
- “The economic model of healthcare is institutionally perverse.” Al Shar, CIO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said that … and is HE right there or what?
- “We must kill the silos.” Jayant Parthasarathy, the Director of Innovation and R+D at United Health Care … another “is he right or WHAT?” moment
- It’s the user experience, stupid. No one actually said that, but it was the subtext of almost every panel. Including the one that I participated in, which made the local business pages the next day
As I said in the opening graf, watch this space for an update when the full report hits Disruptive Women in Health Care in the coming weeks.
And tell me what mobile health apps you use, or you dream of – I really do want to know, and I really will help bring them to life.
Mobile medicine: movable feast or meaningless motion?
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The concept of mobile health and mobile medicine is enticing. “There’s an app for that” when applied to managing a chronic condition like diabetes, or navigating cancer treatment, sounds like real 21st century healthcare, doesn’t it?
Tomorrow (Dec. 1, 2011) I’m on a panel that’s part of mHealthCon at Rutgers University, a conference where a plethora of mobile app developers and thought leaders will be talking both the idea and the practical app of mobile in healthcare.
Our panel is self-described as the American Idol judges – I’m Simon, including the scowl potential – and we’re expected to give meaningful and frank feedback to the app developers that are in the session preceding us. Leading the conversation will be my buddy Bob Brooks of WEGO Health, and sitting with me in judgement will be Amy Gurowitz (who’s gonna channel either J-Lo or Ellen, she hasn’t decided yet) of MS-LOL and MS SoftServe, as well as the founder of Divabetic, Max Szadek (he’s Paula).
The challenges that mobile health development face were summed up brilliantly by Dr. Kenny Linn in a post on the US News health blog:
Apps have … advantages over traditional medical texts. The information is always current, whereas many textbooks are already dated by the time they hit shelves. If I have a question, I can look up the answer on my smartphone without leaving my patient’s side.
But smartphone apps also have downsides—despite their enormous potential to improve the quality and convenience of healthcare. While textbooks undergo rigorous review by experts, apps vary in quality and don’t have to be vetted for accuracy or safety.
That point was driven home to me recently when a colleague shared a nifty app she’d downloaded that acted as a mobile electrocardiogram (ECG) monitor: Just place your finger tip on the smartphone’s camera, and your heart rate and electrical rhythm appear on screen. Visions of chucking our office’s bulky and temperamental ECG machine briefly danced in my head—until I tried the app out and found the readings to be completely wrong.
That’s a pretty clear indication that mobile apps, particularly those meant to be used by clinicians, or to be used by patients to provide data that clinicians can use in their clinical decision making, need to be vetted as thoroughly as a medical text must be.
What would your requirement(s) for a healthcare mobile app be? You can answer as a patient, as a caregiver, as a clinician, or as all three.
I really do want your answers, and even if you’re not seeing this until days/weeks/months after it posts, please share your thoughts in the comments.
I have the ear, the eye, and the attention of a whole host of people who are working on creating meaningfully useful apps for doctors, nurses, lab techs, patients, caregivers, and more.
Let ‘er rip!
Things that make you go “thanks”
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Let’s not be turkeys this Thanksgiving.
Let’s not start fights with the relatives while we’re together for the weekend.
Don’t let it matter that someone voted for Obama, or is backing Newt.
Let it ride that somebody’s a Dallas Cowboys fan (that’s work for me) or passionate about defending Penn State (it’s a great school, with a great history).
Accept the fact that Aunt [whoever] will always bring the thing you absolutely hate to eat. Put a teaspoonful on your plate, and suck it up. Or hide it under some mashed potatoes.
Surrender to the idea that, at Thanksgiving, we are brought together to be thankful.
Here’s my list:
- My family, who I love to death (even if sometimes one or the other of you will get on my last nerve)
- My friends, who are from all points of the globe and give me hope that I’ll visit each and every one of you (promise? threat? you decide.)
- My customers, who have kept me afloat in some really interesting-in-the-Chinese-curse-way times (divorce + cancer = challenging fiscal cocktail. Trust me on that one.)
- My healthcare team, who kept (and keep) me firmly planted on the planet (they all help me find the funny – see my latest post on Disruptive Women in Health Care for deets)
A short list, but it’s got some serious meat on its gratitude-fueled bones.
What are you grateful for this year?
Be grateful for too much turkey, if you’ve got that. Be grateful for annoying family, because it means you’re not alone. Be grateful for living in a free country, if you do – if you don’t, you can earn the undying gratitude of your community by driving an Arab Spring within your borders.
Be grateful that you’re alive. I have studied history, and the human race is at a point where we can learn to link together in a true global village, and make life vibrant and rewarding for each and every one of us.
Let’s get to work.
Thanks.
