Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.

– Abraham Lincoln

Look to the Future for Health Care Solutions: GOOD magazine gives a nod to the Institute for the Future’s insight into the possible coming advancements in health care.

unNiched(micro) Breakfast – Mobile Health: Hype and Hope: As part of the Path of the Blue Eye Project created by my good friend Fard Johnmar and his health marketing consultancy, Enspektos – the first unNiched event was created around mobile health. With Jane Sarasohn-Kahn at the helm, it was a superb event. This recap contains video and slides for your enjoyment.

Nuns Go After McDonald’s Over Childhood Obesity: Even though this was a showing of good faith (no pun intended), the corporate behemoth is most likely able to fend this one off. Interesting read though.

Four Landmines mHealth Needs to Clear [SXSW recap]: MobiHealthNews goes over the takeaways from one of the most popular panels during this year’s inaugural SXSW Health sessions – Is There Really an App for That?

Childhood Obesity Increasing in Developing World: From the Independent (one of my newer favorite sources of international news) – It is now officially not just a problem for the United States. Now, lack of physical activity and poor nutrition appears to be causing an increased number of overweight children in places within Africa and Asia. Scared yet?

Africa Turns to Cellphones for Better Health: When I first began learning about mobiles in public health, Africa was the place where this innovation was taking place – partly due to learning from Josh Nesbit and the Medic Mobile project. Mobiles are very prominent over there. We need to learn some lessons here for the States.

SXSW 2011 and Health: Dr. V of 33 Charts (who I finally got to meet in person here) gives his own recap to SXSW and thoughts to the future.

Observe Everything. Communicate Well. Draw, Draw, Draw.

Frank Thomas, Disney Animator, When asked to give advice to young animators

McDonald’s Aiming to Start Healthy Food Chain: Well what do you know…the fast food giant is looking to correct the public health disasters they’ve helped to engineer with creating a chain of healthy food restaurants. I came across this after the recent “Oatmealgate”. What do you all think about this?

Why Innovation is So Hard in Health Care: Harvard Business Review series gets started around innovation in health care. Read this. Kanter says that even though it may be hard, we have to do it anyway. Who thinks I agree with this?

Searching for the Public Health Social Media Holy Grail: Good friend, Erica Holt, writes up an issue that a few of us have been marinating on for some time. There is no one good answer as far as the usefulness of social media in public health with behavior change, at least as far as the data is concerned. Make sure and check the comments too – some industry leaders chime in.

Kresge Foundation Awards $6M to Safety Net Initiative: “Launched in 2009, the initiative aims to improve health outcomes for low-income individuals by providing community health centers and anchor institutions from diverse geographies and sectors with the resources to collaborate on innovative approaches to reducing health disparities.”

McKesson Foundation Awards $1.5M for mHealth: Congratulations to the organizations/projects that got funding to pursue some research into mHealth and underserved populations. Notably, my friend Kevin Clauson’s project was picked! Congratulate him on Twitter when you get a chance.

Talking About Transmedia Activism: My very talented and creative friend Lina Srivastava gets interviewed over at the Tribeca Film Institute blog about social change and transmedia. What is transmedia you ask? Basically it’s using various forms and media platforms to tell a story. Here Lina talks about using transmedia for activism. A valuable tool for public health.

Get Ready for the Health Journalism 2011 Conference: For those of you interested in covering stories related to health, the upcoming Health Journalism conference in Philly should be of interest. If you’re on Twitter, connect with Pia Christensen. She is a wealth of information from the Association of Health Care Journalists.

Return of CDC’s Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media: One of the conferences that I would encourage Pulse + Signal’s readers to check out. Really happy it’s happening again this year. If you know of a health communicator or marketer that wants to stay up to date on the field, this is the conference to attend. Spread the word.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.     – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

5 Fictions About Social Media for Public Health and Healthcare: Craig LeFebvre (@chiefmaven) points out some misconceptions about the role of social media in public health and why we should be cautious. I would like to see current stats on Myspace and if it is still worth mentioning.

Former Google Exec Heads to Healthline Networks: Maya Capur will now be Vice President of Business Development at the SF based health information provider.

ZocDoc opens Los Angeles location: Enjoy having an urgent need to book a doctor appointment only to find out they are available 6 months from now? Neither do a lot of other folks. This is why ZocDoc is around, a service helping to solidify same day doctor’s appointments.

Top 10 places Cold and Flu Germs Hide: Walter from HighlightHEALTH goes undercover and reveals prime germ hideouts that we may or may not be familiar with. Don’t let down your guard just because cold/flu season is winding down!

Gates Foundation’s Director of Global Health Steps Down: Dr. Yamada makes good on his commitment of 5 years at the Gates Foundation. He was integral in developing the Access to Medicine Index, which ranks drug companies based on their efforts to provide low-cost medications to low-income people and countries around the world.

Mashups = Mobile Health Success: Jane Sarasohn-Kahn of HealthPopuli expands her thoughts on mashups/collaboration of different professions and backgrounds being the key for mHealth development.  I wholeheartedly agree with this for the big picture of public health, as well.

Alaska + Hawaii Team Up for Telehealth in Rural Areas: Another boost to rural health with technology in parts of the country that need it. What is telehealth you ask?

The Doctor Will Tweet You Now: Scott Hensley of NPR’s Health blog, Shots, takes a look at social media “uh ohs” for physicians on Twitter.

Our Health Sucks But Our Medicine is Awesome: KevinMD hosts a guest post from a doctor who apparently doesn’t think Washington, “Obamacare” or even public health efforts are worth much to improve our health. Can I even go out on a limb here and add in…doctors don’t get it either? And they aren’t necessarily supposed to – as pointed out behaviors are the deeper issue. Who cares how advanced our medicine is if the folks that need it either a) have limited  access b) still think doctors are out to get them?

Welcome back to the Weekly Links Roundup on Pulse + Signal. This is the section every Friday where I pull together interesting links from the week that didn’t get covered here on the blog. Many of you know that I love information and wish I could clone myself to be in multiple places at once. Since that cannot happen, I figured this would be the next best thing.

There is also now a Facebook Page for Pulse + Signal where more content around health innovation is shared and discussions are very much encouraged.

• Heart disease, Flashes and Sweats. Oh My! Noted health writer Liz Scherer investigates research on the dangers of heart disease and what women need to do for prevention. It’s also Heart Disease Awareness month in February.

• Behind The Wheel Texting: What Works to Drive Behavioral Change? Amy Jussel of Shaping Youth takes a look at a behavior change campaign to get rid of driving texters. From what I understand, Oprah doesn’t like it either.

• Taking the Co Pay Out of Staying Healthy LA Times story on assisting adults with free preventive services – screening for things such as diabetes, HBP and breast cancer. A win for prevention/public health?

• Tracking Disease with Twitter: Social Media Epidemiology We’ve seen something like this before with Google’s Flu Trends. JustMeans writer Ano Lobb looks at how social media is possibly changing how we track disease.

• Prostate Health Empowerment? There’s an App for That Urology goes mobile?

• Mobile Tech in Action: Lessons from Haiti One of my favorite sources for information on mobile technology making a difference around the world, MobileActive, highlights a recent Knight Foundation report looking at a new age of disaster relief.

• The Future of Global Health Journalism Global Health Hub editor, Sarah Arnquist, takes an in depth look at a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report on how global health news in portrayed in the media.

• Can a Mobile App Change Your Health Behavior? Erica Holt examines the hype around mobile health and what is really possible for positive behavior change

• Happy One Year Birthday, Let’s Move! Campaign HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, writes a blog post looking back over the year in which the campaign first began.

Intent is the new demographic – What the Mobile Web Means for Health: Jane Sarasohn-Kahn highlights how people use the mobile web and how that translates into action for the health world. [healthpopuli.com]

Behavioral Economics and Public Health at TED 2010: Paul Tarini of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio reflects on a talk he enjoyed at the recent TED event. Check out Paul’s thoughts on competitions for health innovation in an interview I did with him. [rwjf.org]

GE Healthcare Introduces the Vscan: GE unveils the world’s smallest portable ultrasound device! Below is a video (also on the link) of the Vscan in action – [medgadget.com]

Fighting Cancer with Social Media: A great story of hope and community during a tough time of illness for a young child. Reminds me of my interview with Angela Current not long ago. [newsfiresocialmedia.com]

Architecture and the Human Condition: A look at changing where we live for better health from noted architects, Arakawa and Gins. [aribra.com]

One Small Change campaign on Tumblr: It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the Salt Lake Valley Health Department – I wanted to share the link to their Tumblr (a microblogging platform) page for their One Small Change campaign. A great way to continue on the momentum!

When Awareness Isn’t Enough: Great post by my friend Alex Bornkessel looking at the reasons why awareness building often times falls short of effective behavior change campaigns [fly4change.com]

Instead of waiting until the end of the week where I may or may not have the time to wrangle up various links, I’ve decided to put them together in a bundle whenever I come across a few great resources!

New York Focused On Curbing Salt Intake: “Now Mr. Bloomberg has called on restaurant chains and food producers to lower the amount of salt in their products by 25 percent over the next five years. The goal is to reduce the incidence of high blood pressure, a major contributor to heart attacks, strokes and kidney disease.” [NYTimes]

What’s the Point of Health 2.0?: Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet Project brings up an important conversation topic surrounding the Health 2.0 movement (make sure and read the comments!) [e-patients.net]

Communication Focus in Healthcare 2.0: Great video illustrating the evolution of what’s been happening at the nexus of social media and healthcare

Can you believe the year 2010 is just a few weeks away? I almost feel like I should be the owner of a hoverboard or something…

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give – Sir Winston Churchill

• Best Buy Now Offering Personal Health Technologies
  • Best Buy announced today that 40 of its stores in the U.S. have begun offering personal health solutions devices like pedometers, Bluetooth-enabled weight scales and blood pressure monitors.
• How Healthy (or Unhealthy) is YOUR State?
  • Is Vermont healthy because of the awesome Ben & Jerry’s ice cream?
• Smokefree Wisconsin Debuts Report on Race and Menthol Cigarettes
  • I did a report on this in college and glad it’s still a topic of discussion. Interesting research and observations here.
• 5 Healthcare Ladies to Watch
  • So glad that these ladies were profiled as to what they are contributing to the health conversation. A few of them are good friends of mine and it’s always great to see your friends shine. Keep up the great work!

• FrontlineSMS Sets the Record Straight
  • I’ve talked about their impact on mHealth quite a bit but here is a post that clears up any question as to what these talented mobile pioneers are focused on doing
• Playnormous Nominated as Marketer of the Year
  • Really proud of the work (interactive health games) that one of my favorite companies has been doing – apparently so do others! Please spread the word if you’re in Houston to get them the award!

Is it just me or is 2009 very quickly coming to a close? Here are some links to close out October.

• Josh Nesbit joins the FrontlineSMS team officially
  • “Josh was the original inspiration behind the creation of targeted FrontlineSMS communities of practice when he started applying the software in health, making him the ideal candidate for what we’re calling the FrontlineSMS Ambassador Programme.” – K. Banks
• Interview with new mHealth Alliance Executive Director
  • From the MobiHealthNews blog, an interview with the Exec Director of the mHealth Alliance
• Parents Throwing Swine Flu “Parties” to Improve Kids’ Resistance?
  • I wish I was joking – of course it’s a bad move!



• Pew + Robert Wood Johnson Foundation develop Health Impact Project
  • “The Health Impact Project will promote the use of health impact assessments to incorporate health into decisions made by sectors—such as transportation, planning, education or housing—that do not traditionally focus on health outcomes.”

• The Persistent Impact of Poverty for Health
  • Health Populi’s Jane Sarasohn-Kahn writes on the high cost of poverty and how it affects the nation’s health
• The Triangle area is focused on global health
  • Right here in North Carolina, Sabine of Science in the Triangle highlights the area’s dedication to improving health around the world

Photo Credit: PreciousKhyatt

August swiftly coming to an end. Sheesh.

Be true to your work, your word and your friend.

Henry David Thoreau

• Dr. Francis Collins – New Director of the National Institutes of Health
  • Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project
• Humana’s Grant Harrison and the B-cycle Bike Sharing Program
  • The cross-impact of transportation initiatives and public health from my buddies over at Humana
• Twitter Creator, Jack Dorsey Endorses The Extraordinaries
  • Big props to the great team over at The Extraordinaries for their hard work and social change movement!
• Interview with Whitney Ping of HopePhones
  • The mobile health initiative that I heavily support gets some love from my friend James through an interview with their Director of Partnerships
• Disease Diagnosis with a Mobile Phone?
  • Continued mobile innovations in the public health space
• Social Media’s Promise for Public Health
  • The most wonderfully talented Susannah Fox sheds light on the burgeoning movement towards social technologies in public health – these insights come from the recent CDC Health Communication, Marketing and Media conference