February 2009 Archives

As many of you have heard, yesterday Tom Daschle, President Obama's nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services and lead the Administration's health care reform efforts, withdrew his nomination from consideration. The confirmation of Mr. Daschle, a former Senate Majority Leader, had grown controversial following disclosures of a failure to pay certain taxes, the second time a cabinet nominee faced such issues in as many weeks.

I just read Vitrue’s ranking of the top 100 social brands and saw not a single health-related brand on the list. That’s hardly shocking, since we all knew health was behind the curve set by tech and consumer mega-brands, and a lot of healthcare organizations have huge challenges with privacy and regulatory issues. On top of that, there aren’t many health brands with the reach and recognition of Coke or Target. If the list went to 200, might we start to see at least a few big consumer health brands with significant online aspirations, like Susan G. Komen and Weight Watchers?

Here’s a guest post from my colleague Jennifer Pfahler, EVP, Consumer Health , Edelman The simple power of human connection is a key point that’s often lost when we think about how to engage and build trusted relationships with health stakeholders. After all, at the end of the day, regardless of our societal place and professional roles, we are just people connected by similar needs, wants and fears as caretakers of our personal health and the well-being of our families. And, these days, there’s plenty to worry about in health (e.g., product safety, food safety, coverage concerns), yet the power of connecting our personal experiences and emotions can bring about profound engagement that can lead to trusted, productive and long-term relationships. I saw this idea come to life very powerfully just the other day when we held a casting call and press conference at Grand Central Terminal in New York City for the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Go Red For Women campaign. We were there to kick off American Heart Month by finding everyday women to share their own personal stories about heart health for an NBC documentary we’re producing to make women aware that heart disease is the #1 killer of women and how women can take action to live heart healthy. As the event began, I witnessed an accomplished group of health stakeholders come together – including the AHA’s executive leadership, several physicians and nurses from elite institutions, corporate partners, and everyday people. Our press conference speaker line-up was an impressively diverse group including AHA Chairman Dave Josserand, Jamie Rosati, senior director of healthcare consumer strategy at Merck, Martine Reardon, executive vice president of retail giant Macy’s, and campaign spokesperson, model/actress Andie MacDowell of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” fame. Also on deck to speak were female patients whom at some point in their lives had been impacted by heart disease.

Inside the nearly $800 billion stimulus bill about to hit the President’s desk is $1.1 billion for what is known as comparative effectiveness research. It’s not a high percentage of the overall bill, but this item has touched off an acrimonious conservative-liberal debate that might have been more informative if Congressional leaders had followed Engagement Rule #2 – be transparent. The ideological hectoring grew aflame starting on the right when the Galen Institute’s Amy Menefee and former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey wrote pieces for The Washington Times and Bloomberg portraying the effort as a danger to physician independence and another step toward a cost-focused government-run health care system. Commentary from Rush Limbaugh and others boiled the pot even further, and then liberal blogger Ezra Klein and Washington Post columnist Steve Pearlstein jumped in to defend the effort (and attack McCaughey) in response.

This marks my second week in Hong Kong. While most of my time in Asia has been based in Korea, I am excited about the move to Hong Kong especially as it provides a new perspective on healthcare in Asia.

Whydot pharma this week highlighted a relatively new online community called nhsunlocked which provides patients in the UK with a great central resource to engage with other patients or healthcare professionals and rate hospitals and patient organisations. While not an official NHS website, whydot pharma hopes that it may point the way forward for governments and healthcare systems to engage directly with the ‘grass roots’ through social media.

One of the most moving stories at the Oscar awards this year was that of Pinki Sonkar, a nine-year-old girl from a remote village in northern India. Smile Pinki, her 39-minute story of a fairy tale makeover from a cleft-lip waif in hiding, won Megan Mylan and her cast and crew an Oscar for short documentary. Pinki was a girl who had never seen an electric bulb or a television screen. She had never worn slippers, let alone shoes, as she was used to loitering barefoot in her village. And she did not have a single colour-coordinated dress. Life would have been an endless effort to hide from people making painful remarks or sympathetic clucks – the fate of 35,000 children born with a cleft lip or palate in India every year – but for Dr Subokh Kumar Singh, who undid nature’s damage and changed her life forever. After using his surgical skills, Dr Singh did another makeover for her – he bought her clothes and patiently taught her social graces so that she ended up on the red carpet at the Oscars, carrying out our real life role in Hollywood with aplomb.

Government spending gets more attention this week as President Obama releases his fiscal plans, and the President’s speech last night to Congress drove home the point that attention to major health care changes drives part of their budget agenda.