Paula Deen can be seen on The Food Network.

Food Network star Paula Deen took to the airwaves this week to announce that she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes three years ago. What got more press, however, was her second revelation that she is now the new face of diabetes drug company Novo Nordisk.

Diabetes is a serious disease that affects an estimated 25.8 million Americans. Deen was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, the most common form of diabetes and the kind that most people can manage through diet and exercise. Learn how to take steps to prevent type 2 diabetes at healthfinder.gov.

Deen is a well-known champion of butter, bacon, and burgers (donut burgers, that is), among other indulgent foods. Her cookbooks, magazine, and multiple Food Network shows have built her brand on “Southern” and “comfort” food. She’s never claimed to promote healthy eating and, more often, celebrates doing just the opposite. She posits herself as a stark contrast to a “health nut” type of cook.

Deen isn’t a stranger to criticism, either. Fellow celebrity chef Anthony Bordain takes regular shots at the Food Network star. And Deen was inaugurated into the Internet Meme Hall of Fame last year with the delightful Paula Deen Riding Things.

Deen’s decision to pair the announcement that she has type 2 diabetes with the announcement of her diabetes drug endorsement deal sends the wrong message. It implies that diabetes can be managed with a drug alone instead of with significant changes to diet and physical activity levels. Her decision to tell the world that she has diabetes apparently was prompted only by her drug endorsement deal.  Even worse is that she has known about her diabetes for three years and in that time, took no visible steps to change her lifestyle.

Consumers have a responsibility to educate themselves and, if they disagree with Deen’s message, to not buy her products or watch her shows. But whether we like it or not, celebrities have more influence than that. It’s not enough to avoid their products. Through their actions, these celebrities contribute to larger cultural conversations. We want our favorite celebrities to welcome social responsibility, be role models, and use their star power for good.

Celebrity endorsements have been used to communicate plainly to the public about products, campaigns, and issues. Many people relate to celebrities and the characters they play on screen more than they do to academics, politicians, or businessmen. This places celebrities in a position to communicate certain messages more effectively than other people. In essence, this is what plain language communication is all about. People can make better decisions when they’re armed with information they can relate to and understand.

Deen could have communicated her diabetes announcement differently. Instead of endorsing a diabetes drug, why not release a healthy Southern or comfort food cookbook? Why not start a show that pairs exercise and cooking? Why not show fans that change is possible? The public image of any diva or other long-time celebrity includes transformation. People want to see their icons rise above hardships stronger than ever – it gives them hope. Deen’s choice to confront diabetes with a drug instead of with changes to diet and exercise was not just a poor health choice: it was also, arguably, poor brand strategy.

The list of celebrities who are making positive health choices and promoting healthy living is quite long. A few favorite examples are Beyonce’s partnership with Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign, Bill Clinton’s move from eating French fries to looking like one (the former president used a vegan diet to lose weight and combat heart disease), and Jamie Oliver winning the 2010 TED Prize for his work promoting nutrition in school cafeterias.

Time will tell whether Deen’s drug endorsement backfires. More importantly, as she celebrates her 65^th birthday today (Happy Birthday, Mrs. Deen), let’s hope that, if not publicly, she is at least privately making healthier choices for herself and for her family.

Having computers armed with data taking the place of doctors is a far-off, if not totally implausible, reality. But it’s interesting to think about the extreme because, chances are, healthcare is going to fall somewhere in between. While data and technology may never replace a human being, they will likely evolve into essential tools for every patient and provider.

Asthmapolis uses inhalers equipped with GPS to track, manage, and research asthma.

The impact of data and technology on healthcare is already evident. Melinda Gates talked recently about how data informs everything that The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation does. Companies like Massive Health and Asthmapolis are founded on creating innovative ways to collect and interpret large amounts of data. By making data more accessible, they hope to impact individual behavior and public health surveillance.

Technology can also help in places like Africa, India, and China, to name a few, where there is a dearth of primary care physicians. Are 10+ years of training needed to be a primary care provider? No, and technology can help lower the learning curve in places that need it most.

A large piece of this puzzle is plain language. One of Khosla’s more interesting suggestions in the TechCrunch piece was to create a digital translation tool that translates plain language terms for symptoms like “I feel itchy” into doctor-speak. This allows electronic health records (EHRs) to better track patients’ symptoms over time and could potentially allow the user to look up ailments outside of WebMD.

Withings' Blood Pressure Monitor allows users to measure their blood pressure on their own with an iPhone.

As patients get access to more information, plain language becomes a necessity. The use of personal health tracking tools is rising, and patients need to understand the data that’s coming at them. All this technology may free up providers, allowing them to talk more, in plain language, with their patients. No longer will they have to spend the extra minutes to measure blood pressure, because their patient’s Withings Blood Pressure Monitor did it for them that morning.

This may be verging on too optimistic, but maybe technology will not replace physicians but instead allow and encourage them to be even more present with their patients. At the moment, that’s not happening. Our excitement over data and technology has had us forgetting the importance of a “doctor’s touch,” as physician and writer Abraham Verghese points out in his brilliant TED talk.

The truth is, when you’re sick, data won’t hold your hand, bring you a cold compress, or look you in the eye and tell you it’s going to be alright. There is a positive relationship between human interaction, perception, and health that data may never be able to fully track. As long as we don’t forget that, compute away.

Press ‘play’ on the Digital Health Communication Extravaganza’s (DHCX) promotional video, and the words “get ready for a deep dive into the digital age of health communication” flash across the screen to a pulsing bass line. If you haven’t heard about this brand-new conference, allow us to fill you in… and what better time, as the early registration deadline was just extended to December 31.

Slated for February 15-17, 2012, DHCX is the brainchild of health marketing and communication expert Dr. Jay Bernhardt, founder of the CDC National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media, and sponsored by the University of Florida Center for Digital Health and Wellness. This innovative event offers participants tools on applying “digital resources in community and health care settings to obtain optimal behavior changes and health outcomes.” Sounds pretty cool, right? We think so! We’re one of the event’s sponsors, so make sure to stop by our interactive booth if you attend.

The promo video’s ‘deep dive’ language is on target: presenters run the gamut from Federal agencies like the National Cancer Institute’s and Federal Drug Administration’s Offices of Communication, to digital media, marketing, and communication companies. Jay Bernhardt himself will open the conference’s first plenary session, and other health communication icons like Craig Lefebvre and our own Sandy Hilfiker make up an eclectic roster of speakers that promises to be engaging and informative. We’ll be tweeting at #healthlit (along with the conference hashtag, #dhcxconf) if you want to follow the action during the event.

DHCX is sure to be a conference highlight for 2012 – and hopefully years to come – for public health and communication professionals who want to learn about the latest digital health resources and network with innovators in the field.

When: February 15-17, 2012

Where: Peabody Orlando Hotel, Orlando, FL

Who Should Attend: Professionals, scientists, researchers, practitioners, students, developers, entrepreneurs, and visionaries from government agencies, academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit companies who are or want to become advanced users of information and communication technologies in public health and healthcare.

Website: http://dhcx.org

Twitter: http://twitter.com/dhcxconf

Facebook: http://dhcx.fbjoin.me

Featured Speakers: • Sekou Andrews, Storyteller/Poet • Rohit Bhargava, Global Strategy & Marketing, Ogilvy • Amelia Burke, Digital Media, Westat • Jonathan Cho, Office of Communication and Education, National Cancer Institute • Kathy Crosby, Center for Tobacco Products, US Food and Drug Administration • Cliff Dasco, General Internal Medicine, The Methodist Hospital, University of Houston • Matthew Dasco, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch • Sandy Hilfiker, User-Centered Design, CommunicateHealth, Inc. • Lenora Johnson, Office of Communication and Education, National Cancer Institute • Gary Kreps, Department of Communication, George Mason University • Craig Lefebvre, socialShift; RTI International; University of South Florida • Dana Lewis, Swedish Health Services • Mark Luckie, 10,000 words; The Washington Post • Scott Shamp, New Media Institute Grady College, University of Georgia • Vic Strecher, University of Michigan; HealthMedia, a Johnson & Johnson company • Larry Swiader, National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy

Courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti

In an opinion piece published last week in Roll Call, Raphael Bostic (HUD) and Risa Lavizzo-Mourey (RWJF) tell it like it is: housing policy is health policy.

We are proud to support HUD — as well as HHS, EPA, and other federal agencies — in their joint effort to create healthy homes and neighborhoods. Our team is currently hard at work developing a new federal website featuring easy-to-understand information on health and housing topics like asthma, pests, personal safety, and renters’ rights.

The launch of this new federal healthy homes site will not only make critical information easily accessible to web users everywhere, but also serve to bolster the efforts of the agencies and individuals who agree that the health and housing sectors must work together in order to be effective.

To that end, we’re also happy to announce that over the next 5 years, CommunicateHealth will be supporting CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health in its mission to prevent illness, disability, and death from interactions between people and their environment.

At CommunicateHealth, we are committed to educating people about the link between our health and our housing — a link that has been largely overlooked for far too long. We know that improving housing also improves health. Now it’s time to translate that knowledge into action.

As HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said at a recent conference: “You can predict the life expectancy of a child by the ZIP code in which they grow up. This is wrong.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Healthy Homes, a new federal website, is scheduled to launch this spring.

GlowCaps reminds patients to take medication and alerts doctors and families that pills have been taken.

Closing this week at New York’s Museum of Modern Art is the popular exhibit Talk To Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects.

The exhibit showcased objects, interfaces, and visualizations that, enabled by technology, “establish an emotional, sensual, or intellectual connection with their users.”

The MOMA exhibit highlighted an eclectic mix of objects - toys with augmented reality, news aggregators that can filter all the world news published in the last 10 minutes, and an interactive, personalized music video.

We officially live in an age where objects “talk” to us. The iPhone 4s was not featured (it was released after the exhibit opened) but worth mentioning; personal voice attendant Siri has set the new “talking” standard. This cultural shift is captured in the recent viral hit A Magazine is an iPad That Does Not Work.

Talk To Me’s featured healthcare projects were some of the exhibit’s best examples of how advances in technology can improve lives.

The first two healthcare objects, Swallow-Signaling Pill and Vitality GlowCaps, attempt to fix an ongoing challenge in disease management – many patients with chronic conditions do not take their medications. The American Medical Association reports that people with chronic conditions only take their medications half the time. This results in more doctors visits and, often, more medication.

The Swallow-Signaling Pill embeds a microchip inside each pill.

One answer: patient accountability. The Swallow-Signaling Pill is still in development, but plans to embed tiny digestible microchips and antenna into every pill. When the pill is swallowed, it emits bursts of low-voltage electricity, sending a signal to the patient’s doctor or family alerting them that the pill has been taken.

Vitality GlowCaps are less invasive. They are caps on pill bottles that glow or make a sound when it’s time to take a pill. When the bottle is opened, it alerts the patient’s doctor and family. GlowCaps were first released in 2009. Read about GlowCaps impressive impact in more detail.

The most impressive of the three healthcare products was E.chromi – a “experimental collaboration” between designers and scientist at Cambridge University to use synthetic biology as a tool for self-diagnosis. E.chromi is a fictional drink that, using real synthetic biology technology, would detect different bacteria in a person’s body and produce a bright florescent color in the feces as a response. So, for example, bright neon orange could indicate that E.chromi detected bacteria linked to colitis, an inflammation of the colon. This could then prompt you to see a physician.

The healthcare projects in Talk To Me all share a common theme echoed in much of health 2.0: patient empowerment – developing user friendly tools that help consumers take charge of their own health.

Technology is never a cure-all, but it can surely help if it knows how to talk to us, and we’re willing to talk back.

E. chromi from Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg on Vimeo.

About Cake Health

Cake Health allows you to manage your health insurance online.

Having full-service health insurance coverage is great. No one should be without it. Managing your own health insurance, on the other hand, can be time-consuming and painful.

The claims, the deductibles, the confusing bills and non-bills, the minute coverage details, the delays in processing, the mistakes in processing, the figuring out of who owes what to whom – these things combined can equal hours of aggravation on the phone with your insurance company.

Thankfully, someone made an app for that.

It’s called Cake Health and it’s a free online service that lets users to easily track their health insurance data. After months of being in private beta, it was released to the public last month and had it’s coming out party at TechCrunch’s recent Disrupt conference.

Being hailed as the “Mint for Health Insurance,” Cake Health pulls in insurance data from your health plan Web site log-in. (If you’re like me, you’ll create a health insurance Web site login just to use Cake Health.) From there, Cake Health pulls in and organizes your health insurance data. This includes all claims, medical bills, how much has been paid out-of-pocket, what insurance has covered, how much of the deductible has been met, and coverage details.

With all of this information, Cake Health is able to create a profile that saves you time and, theoretically, helps you stay healthier by keeping you better informed. For example, by knowing what services are covered by your insurance, Cake Health can send you a reminder about an annual eye exam or dental check-up.

In true “Mint” fashion, the site is tailored for the user with clear labeling and colorful data visualizations.

What’s best about companies like Cake Health is that they empower the user in a system that does anything but. Let’s face it – health insurance companies do not make it easy, a result of many factors including lack of competition in the industry.

One day, as a result of private, public, or government pressure, things will change for the better.

In the meantime, let’s cheer the successes of Cake Health, ZocDoc, WiThings, and other Health 2.0 companies that are giving users the power to take control of their healthcare.

ZocDoc allows users to book doctors appointments online.

It was announced last week that ZocDoc, the ‘OpenTable’ of doctor’s appointments, raised another $25 million in funding, bringing their total funding since launching in 2007 to an impressive $95 million.

Available in most major cities and rapidly expanding, ZocDoc allows you to book doctors appointments online. With a few clicks you can find a local doctor that takes your insurance and make an appointment for as soon as that day. Something so simple that is often such a headache.

The latest round of funding is well-deserved. Since it started, ZocDoc has been able to find success where most tech companies fall short – making a profit and revamping a lumbering, tired industry – in this case, healthcare.

It’s been said in TechCrunch that a big reason for ZocDoc’s ongoing prosperity is its user-focused site. While ZocDoc’s business runs on recruiting doctors into their system, their website speaks to its users first and foremost – it’s clean, easy-to-use, and, best of all, free. There are few, if any, barriers to entry that would cause a user to click away.

ZocDoc is a great example of good things happening to a good Web site, and behind that Web site a good company.

If ZocDoc isn’t in a city near you yet, with this new funding the wait shouldn’t be long.

Renee Walker's label

All natural!  Good source of calcium! Low fat! Messages on the front of food packages shout at us in the grocery store, convincing us we need not stare at the stark statistics on the back of the package to determine if it’s healthy.  When it comes to making food choices, the current nutrition label is not nearly as helpful as it needs to be.

Rethink the Food Label is a design challenge hosted by UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s News21 and Good magazine that asked the public to imagine what a more informative nutrition label could look like.

Renee Walker’s label that breaks down ingredients visually was determined to be the winner.

Competition judge and food writer Michael Pollan said of the label, “Walker’s design is dramatic, intriguing and holds great promise. I liked being able to see the visual breakdown of foods, although I wonder how her design would work with more complicated products, like Lucky Charms, say, or a PowerBar. Even so, it’s a step in the right direction. What I’d like to see next is some sort of color coding for the food groups and some attempt to show the degree of processing of various foods. Eating doesn’t have to be complicated; figuring out what’s in your food shouldn’t be either.”

Joey Brunelle's label

It seems what is most needed in a food label redesign is the ability to quickly determine whether a product has health benefits or risks. A list of numbers and statistics don’t resonate with most people, which is why visualizing information with charts and graphs is definitely an improvement on the current Nutrition Facts.

Joey Brunelle’s circle graphs are an efficient use of space, but not as immediately clear as the bar graphs on Bradley Mu’s label. While the green/yellow/red stoplight color scheme sends a familiar signal, it’s not accessible to those who are red/green colorblind.  Realistically, a new food label would have to scale well from a small candy bar to a large cereal box, which could become difficult with visual charts and graphs. On Mu’s design, highlighting food additives in bold text is a good thought, but it may just confuse those who don’t already know to watch out for high fructose corn syrup. Similarly, people with limited health literacy skills aren’t going to understand the relevance of “glycemic index.”

As creative and idealistic as these propositions are, one of the largest barriers to redesigning the food label is the food industry. Companies would never allow any outright nutritional naysaying – leaving you on your own to determine if 1192 mg of sodium or 20 grams of sugar per serving is bad for you.

Bradley Mu's label

One of the issues that is most difficult to communicate in nutrition facts is that the percent daily values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet, which is not right for everyone. A child needs fewer calories, and someone with an active lifestyle needs more. Perhaps this could be addressed with a smartphone app that could help create more personalized nutrition and diet recommendations.

The food label is one of the most common health communications products out there – many of us use it nearly every day. How can we make it a more effective tool for those with limited health literacy skills? What do you want to see on food labels?

“There are nearly 2,000 top-level web domains across the Federal Government. While many of these sites provide taxpayers with valuable services and information, this proliferation of separate websites creates unnecessary confusion and inefficiency, wastes taxpayer dollars, and makes it difficult for the public to find important government information and resources.”

We totally agree with this assessment. A search on childhood obesity limited to .gov domains gives 156,000 results from state and federal agencies as varied as the FCC, the CDC, and the USDA. This is just one example of how challenging it can be for consumers to quickly find information online from the Federal Government.

In an attempt to rein in content on federal Web sites, the White House has put a moratorium on new .gov domains. Meanwhile, the Campaign to Cut Waste is reviewing all existing federal Web sites and developing a plan to consolidate or shut down enough sites to cut the total number of sites in half over the next year.

This is an ambitious undertaking. But it does not address the underlying challenge that got the Feds in this mess in the first place:

How do government agencies create useful, timely, and relevant content without clogging up search engine results with redundant results?

The answer? With good content strategy, of course!  Content strategy can help answer questions like:

• What content do we already have?
• What content do we need?
• How will people find our content?
• Who’s in charge of the content?
• How will content be maintained?
• How will we know when it’s time to update or remove content?

We concede that content strategy takes some work. It’s much easier to start with a clean slate, write some brand new content, borrow from existing content, package it all up with bright colors and slap a .gov URL on the end. But until federal agencies start cultivating and caring for the content that they already have, the government will continue to waste money churning out redundant content that the public can’t find and federal agencies can’t maintain.

Join the discussion with a live chat with the White House’s Director of Digital Strategy today at 4:00 PM Eastern.

Courtesy of Master Isolated Images

The report from Susannah Fox at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, The Social Life of Health Information, 2011, is a treasure trove of data for public health and health communication professionals. The report investigates the online health-seeking behaviors of adults in the U.S.

There are a number of items in the report that piqued our attention, but the data that had our office talking is about people seeking health information on social networking sites—or the lack thereof.

“Social network sites are popular, but used only sparingly for health updates and queries.”

The numbers show that most people use social networking sites exactly for their intended use—connecting socially. Users are not seeking out medical information on these sites, but rather seeking or providing social support, or supporting health-related causes. Fox notes that “social network sites are not a significant source of health information for most people, but they can be a source of encouragement and care.” An exception to this may be active groups of e-patients and caregivers who use online social networks to discuss disease management and treatment.

Many people (including us) have been guilty at one time or another of pushing the use of Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks to reach the masses with health information. The problem is that we often forget to think of whether or not that’s where our intended audiences want to be reached. According to the Pew report, only 7% of adults have gotten any health information on social network sites. A targeted, personalized approach for reaching e-patients and caregivers is likely a more valuable online endeavor.

The Pew data serve as a reminder that we need to reach people with health information when and where they are prepared to receive it. Social network sites are still valuable communication tools, especially when part of a larger outreach plan, but they are only one of the many tools we have.