Exercise, Food and Wellness: Backstage Video Interviews from Spring Fling 2011
One area where Health 2.0 technologies show great promise and some early market penetration is in tools for wellness. Employers, consumers, and even Medicare are now paying for programs and services that don’t look like traditional medical care. In a world where our physical and social environment seem to be programming us for obesity, new approaches that address exercise, food and lifestyle-change are finally gaining traction.
These back stage videos taken at last week’s Health 2.0 Spring Fling 2011 look at how Health 2.0 tools and concepts are becoming apart of the fabric for better micro-and macro-decisions about food and healthy behaviors.
Dean Ornish, Founder & President, Preventive Medicine Research Institute
For more than 30 years Dean has been developing and working on ways to treat heart disease that fundamentally challenge the assumptions of our medical-industrial complex by avoiding drugs and surgery. His current research is showing that comprehensive lifestyle changes affect gene expression. Dean has been consulting physician to Presidents and Congressional leaders, written numerous articles in the academic and popular press—and four best-selling books—been the subject of several documentaries, advised corporations from McDonalds to Google, and received too many awards to list. After a prolonged process, Medicare has now agreed to provide coverage for Dean’s program, the first time that it’s covered a program of comprehensive lifestyle changes.
Carol Diamond, Managing Director, Markle Foundation
Carol directs the Health Program at Markle and chairs Connecting for Health—the public-private collaborative that laid the groundwork for much of the activity we’re seeing in Health IT today. She’s been featured at our DC Conference talking about consumers use of Health IT and at our Fall 2010 Conference promoting the Blue Button initiative. But today she’s talking about her new interest: food.
Carter Headrick, Director of State and Local Obesity Policy Initiatives, American Heart Association
Carter is an expert in guerrilla public health marketing. Enemy of Joe Camel; Carter put together 400,000 activists at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Now that the cartoon billboards are gone, he’s turned his attention to the American Heart Association where he heads up the effort against obesity.
Ethan Austin, Co-Founder, GiveForward
After fundraising online for a charity marathon, Ethan began to wonder what other causes the same tools could be used for. He then met Desiree Wrigley who was looking for a partner to do the same thing. GiveForward is the result. It helps people create an online fundraising page; a popular resource for people try to get help with medical expenses.
Hemi Weingarten, CEO & Founder, Fooducate
Hemi started out as co-founder of MDRM, a tech company acquired by SanDisk, and along the way became husband and father to three young children. He’s a sworn foodie but realized that he didn’t know much about what was in the food he was giving his kids. The result is Fooducate, and its place in the Top 10 of the App Store’s Health category shows that he’s not alone in wanting to make the right choices.
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