This time of year, Twitter and Google searches capture innumerable complaints and questions about the flu. Luckily, new research established by Google and Johns Hopkins University claim this online buzz is a good thing. By using aggregate flu-related terms, you can now analyze social media trends to track and predict flu outbreaks. (more…)
Yesterday I was browsing Popular Science and found an interesting article, Science Confirms the Obvious: Rejection Can Make You More Creative. The article discussed new research being conducted by a team from Cornell and Johns Hopkins that found people who handle rejection in a proper manner, can experience heightened creativity and even commercial success through an ability to avoid mainstream thought and pursue their own creative solutions to problems.
In summary, rejection or failure forces people to be creative and think outside of their “box.” While this sounds pretty obvious, I started thinking about this in terms of scientific research and advancement and how, as a community, we need to be embracing this concept. The scientific community continually wants to publish and promote positive study results, but does this really benefit the advancement of science? What if some of our biggest rejections could lead us to a greater success? (more…)
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Last month, I attended the Global Tobacco Briefing hosted by the American Cancer Society (ACS) and World Lung Foundation, as invited by my daughter Victoria Seng, an associate specialist with ACS’s Cancer Action Network (CAN) here in Washington.
Listening to global experts shed light on the health and economics that the tobacco industry would rather we not know was a real eye-opener for me during the morning National Press Club briefing.
Suffice to say, tobacco companies prolong preventable epidemics in cancer, heart disease and other conditions by exploiting trade agreements and abusing local legal systems throughout the world. (more…)
While it’s really no huge secret anymore that osteoporosis affects women at a much greater rate than men, I feel as though bone health, whether about women or men, is manifestly underrated.
But the Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR) continues stepping in the right direction by choosing bone health as the theme for its upcoming gala titled “No Bones About It: XXcellence In Musculoskeletal Research.”
“No Bones About It.” I love double entendres and puns. (Especially bad puns. But that’s another post for another blog.)
You still hear this expression now and then. And it makes for a clever, recognizable SWHR Gala theme.
But where did this idiom come from? I decided to check that most authoritative source in the galaxy, the world wide web of course. In this case, a site called World Wide Words. Looks like “no bones about it” probably arose in the middle ages from when the soup or meat contained no bones, and “no bones about it” equated to “no problem” in today’s lexicon. I would also argue that “no bones about it” has hardened (sorry!) in today’s use to also mean beyond dispute or without question.
On Wednesday, February 29, the world celebrated the Fifth Annual Rare Disease Day (made all the more special by the “rareness” of this day’s appearance in our 2012 leap year calendar!) But that of course wasn’t what made this day so particularly impactful.
This year the cause was strengthened with a sense of collaboration, as the FDA hosted its first Patient Advocacy Day, dedicated to the over 30 million American patients in the rare disease community. I was fortunate to be able to attend this event, which featured speakers from various offices within the FDA, including Dr. Gayatri R. Rao of the Office of Orphan Products Development, Dr. Anne Pariser from the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Dr. Markham Luke from the Center for Devices and Radiological Health and Dr. Richard Klein from the Office of Special Health Issues. Amid the alphabet soup of these various departments, the FDA helped to showcase just how the regulatory side works with and really–relies on–patients to move orphan products to the market in the most efficient way possible. The FDA works to do so in number of ways, including:
…culture eats strategy for lunch every day. Now isn’t that the truth? Especially in PR where we put our logical strategic plans up to bat with popular culture daily and hope/wish our audiences hear and pay attention to our message.
Last week I had the pleasure and honor to attend the Health Affairs journal release event at the Capitol Hill Hyatt. This month’s journal was completely based around the #Diabetes pandemic in the United States and internationally with noted scholars such as Dr. Richard Kahn and K.M. Venkat Narayan.
My top take-a-ways:
Top three concepts:
Top three quotes (who says researchers aren’t pithy?):
The keynote speaker, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, shared her take on health care in the U.S. and said we need to put the fun back into our health care. Her speech set the bar high for the remainder of the day as panelists began their presentations.
One panel in particular raised many questions and discussion about ‘The Potential for Lifestyle Changes and Weight Loss.’ The three panelists, Kenneth Thorpe, Richard Kahn and Mohammed K. Ali (not to be confused with the former boxer, Muhammad Ali) first presented their respective papers and then fielded questions from a very engaged audience. With the short presentations by Kenneth Thorpe and Mohammed Ali both individuals covered the results from the National Diabetes Prevention Program with positive language. Dr. Kahn threw some proverbial ‘cold water in the hot tub’ (his words) by reminding the audience to take the results with a grain of salt.
