Americans Hear More Frequently About GLP-1 Drugs Than About Menopause, Sleep, or Bird Flu
Yu In a sign of our health communications times, GLP-1s are a much more frequently health topic Americans hear about than autism and ADHD, cosmetic treatments like Botox, Bird flu, sleep issues, or menopause. The Pew Research Center polled 5,123 U.S. consumers in February and March 2025 to gauge peoples’ perspectives on health information and communications trends in America. In the study summary titled, From weight-loss drugs to raw milk, Americans hear more often about some health topics than others, the Pew Research team. The finding that
Marketing Women’s Health: How Organon’s Nexplanon Took a Page Out of Romance Novels
With women’s health and femtech investing in the spotlight in 2025, most of the focus has been on either women’s access to health care services (e.g., for abortion and prenatal/primary care) to start-ups focusing on fertility technology and benefits, along with growing awareness of the long-overlooked menopause market opportunity. Contraception? Not so visible. Of course, we welcomed the Opill to the over-the-counter medicines market last year with FDA approval of the switch to retail pharmacy and vending machine access. Now let me point you to a newfangled marketing campaign for
A Profile of Health Consumer-Generations’ Use of Digital Health – Rock Health Takes Us Through the Ages
In the past year, most consumers in the U.S. have used virtual care, tracked at least one health metric digitally, and own a wearable or connected health device. Digital health has certainly gone mainstream across U.S. consumers, with varying utilization and motivation by generation, we learn in the report, Screenagers to Silver Surfers: How each generation clicks with care from Rock Health. To segment health consumers by age/generation, the RH team mined the firm’s 10th Consumer Adoption of Digital Health Survey which polled over 8,000 U.S. adults in 2024 on peoples’ perspectives
Improve Sleep, Improve the World and Health: ResMed’s Look at Global Sleep Trends
The world would be a better place if we had more, and better quality sleep. That’s the hopeful conclusion from the fifth annual Global Sleep Survey from ResMed. ResMed’s global reach with the sleeping public enabled the company to access the perspectives of over 30,000 respondents in 13 markets, finding that one in 3 people have trouble falling or staying asleep 3 or more times a week. We now live in “a world struggling with poor sleep” — “a world without rest,” ResMed coins our sleepless situation. The irony is that most people believe
There’s a Health Gap for Women Around the World – and the World Economic Forum Has a Blueprint to Fix It
Even though women comprise one-half of the world’s population, their health outcomes and inputs do not match up to men’s: there’s a women’s health gap on Planet Earth. Meeting in Davos this week for #WEF2025, the World Economic Forum published a report on that gender-health chasm titled, Blueprint to Close the Women’s Health Gap: How to Improve Lives and Economies for All. In collaboration with the McKinsey Health Institute, the report focuses on nine key conditions that, if addressed, could reduce the global disease burden by 27 million disability adjusted life years and add
How World AIDS Day 2024 Can Inform Healthcare in 2025
December 1 2024 was World AIDS Day, which was observed by the Biden White House with the display of the entire AIDS Memorial Quilt on the South Lawn — all 54 tons of it. The Biden-Harris Administration announced efforts, in advance of World AIDS Day, to continue to fight HIV/AIDS “at home and abroad.” The press release for the effort noted that, ”We remember those who have died from AIDS-related illnesses—honoring their courage and contributions as essential to the progress made thus far. We also stand in solidarity with the more than 39 million people with HIV around the world.
Women and #Election2024: Listening to Abigail Adams
With a handful of days before #Election2024 delivers final voters to polls in the U.S. on November 5th, Americans’ political stress is hitting fever pitches from all points on the U.S. political spectrum. Here is the sticker I am using in my journal today, November 1 2024, from Mental Health America. “Vote as if your mental health depends on it.” MHA has a portal devoted to 2024 Election Mental Health Resources, including a section with “mental health voter merch” to call out the phenomenon of political stress and support the efforts
Prescriptions Are Up, Health Services Utilization Down, and GLP-1s Are a Major Growth Driver: IQVIA’s 2024 Update
In the past year, the growth of prescription drug utilization and spending has much to do with the use of GLP-1 agonists to treat diabetes and obesity, along with immunology therapy, and lipid meds, along with specialty medicines now accounting for over half of spending — up from 49% in 2018. This update comes from The Use of Medicines in the U.S. 2024 from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. The annual report details trends in health services utilization, the use of prescription drugs, patient financing of those costs, the drivers underpinning the medicines spending, and an outlook to 2028.
Hims and Hers and Hearts – Cardiology Blurs Into DTC Retail Health
Statin therapy has been used for decades to lower cholesterol with the goal of reducing mortality and preventing cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks and strokes. Hims & Hers announced a new service offering for health consumers and clinicians concerned about heart health called Heart Health by Hims. This is Hims & Hers’ first foray into cardiovascular health, working in collaboration with the American College of Cardiology (ACC). ACC clinical guidelines will inform the Hims’ provider platform for the program. “Prevention is the ideal mechanism to decrease cardiovascular events and ensure optimal heart
I'm gobsmackingly happy to see my research cited in a new, landmark book from the National Academy of Medicine on An Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct for Health and Medicine. My take on transparency-by-design coupled with health literacy, using food nutrition labels as a construct, is part of a chapter on health citizens' trust in AI.
Roche's Healthcare Transformers series features Jane discussing how we can re-imagine patient care in the era of digital health innovation, covering how technology, when enchantingly designed, can help foster trust and engagement as well as move health care to peoples' homes and into their own hands for self-care.
Grateful to Gregg Malkary for inviting me to join his podcast Beyond the Blueprint health+design broadcast to discuss the current landscape and prospects for health citizenship in the U.S. and globally, and implications for health economics, delivery, and retail health for self-care and the home as true medical home.