The communications team at Sanofi, the France-based global pharmaceutical company, quickly responded to a tweet by Roseanne Barr issued this morning about how her use of Ambien was related to her offensive tweet lobbed yesterday on Twitter about Valerie Jarrett, President Obama’s senior advisor.
Barr’s comment on Twitter late last night was that, “I was ambien tweeting.”
Ambien is Sanofi’s prescription drug used by patients to deal with insomnia and sleeplessness. Data provided to the FDA from patients who have used the product demonstrate a variety of side effects including but not limited to nausea, headache, slowed breathing, and amnesia — but not racism as far as the post-marketing surveillance has revealed.
Kudos to Sanofi for their fast reaction to Barr’s blaming the company’s product for somehow addling her judgment. That, after a many tweets responding to fans’ supporting her right to free speech and at least two apologies for her “mistake.”
Health Populi’s Hot Points: The uniquely American challenge of health disparities, especially relating to race, is a topic I’ve covered many times since the launch of Health Populi in 2007. As a child I grew up in metropolitan Detroit, and witnessed as a little girl the Detroit Riots of 1967 which I soberly discussed in this blog post written last July on the 50th anniversary of that event. That summer made a profound impact on me and my world view, from a very young age, that racism had no place in my own life. I hoped as I grew up that somehow, in some way, I could work in the future to help allay disparities based on race and ethnicity.
That’s the America I had envisioned and hoped for, the political home my parents, Kennedy-Humphrey Democrats at that moment, had made for us.
Sanofi, Disney and ABC, and MSNBC’s special programming on Racism in America broadcast last night (ironically timed) are bright spots at this moment in time when we need them. Any of us using Twitter and other social media should be mindful that words matter, and social networks can be used for good…or ill.
America’s healthcare system, the public’s health and individual health outcomes, all depend on us bolstering social determinants. Loving one another is the ultimate social determinant of health. That may be too much for me to ask today. For now, civil discourse, respect, transparency, trust, and social inclusion can help bolster the body politic for both political discourse and the public’s health.
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Data veracity speaks to the old adage, “garbage in, garbage out.” The quality of data is more important than its volume of “Big”-ness. “Inaccurate data leads to corrupted insights and skewed decisions,” Accenture warns. One in 4 health care executives say they’ve been the target of AI bad behaviors like falsified location data and bot fraud more than once. Unsurprisingly, then, 3 in 4 health execs aren’t ready to deal with the “impending waves” of corrupted insights as faked data comes into healthcare databases.
Finally, the Internet of Thinking rounds out Accenture’s five themes in the 2018 Health Tech Vision. Consider the “Internet of Things” morphing to the “T” of “Thinking” (IoTh). In healthcare, this IoTh envisions embedded intelligent tools “everywhere,” and especially “at the edge.” I’m not talking about U2’s outstanding lead guitarist and songwriter, David Howell Evans, but the phenomenon that doing healthcare better requires data accessed where patients and people “are.” Data can be processed and stored at the edge or in the cloud.
“We are at a remarkable point of cancer treatment,” noted Murray Aitken, Executive Director, IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, in a call with media this week. 2017 was a banner year of innovative drug launches in oncology, Aitken coined, with more drugs used more extensively, driving improved patient 
for people dealing with cancer.
Health Populi’s Hot Points: It should be no surprise that the costs of oncology therapies will play a larger role over next decade.
Take a look at the last chart detailing the number of oncologists across countries. Note that the U.S. has a higher rate of clinicians per 1 million population compared with the next-in-line, the UK, Italy, and Germany, with roughly one-half or fewer in Japan, France, Australia, and other nations identified by IQVIA in the report.
Be the change you wish to see in the world, Gandhi has been attributed as saying. This sentiment was echoed by Lauren Singer as we brainstormed the social determinants of health and the factors that underpin healthy communities.
The Healthiest Communities study analyzed a wide range of factors influencing health. I learned that in my region of Chester County, PA, we have many health factor blessings: relatively high life expectancy compared with other U.S. areas and a lower smoking rate. But my home county is also the richest and poorest in the state of Pennsylvania. I sit on board of our town’s free clinic so am aware of our local health challenges based on our own clinic’s patient demographics and my detailed review of our local hospitals’ community assessment reports.
Health Populi’s Hot Points: I was so moved by the 
My brothers and sisters, that’s a new heaven, a new earth, a new world.
What could $28,166 buy you in 2018? A new car? A year of your child’s college education? A plot of land for your retirement home?
we give to every audience.
Health Populi’s Hot Points: The MMI is a sobering reminder that health care spending is the #1 pocketbook issue for most American families. This crosses political parties: healthcare costs hit family budgets hard, and force people of all political stripes to make tough decisions about paying for food, housing, utilities, and saving for future needs.
One-third of Americans are following a specific eating pattern, including intermittent fasting, paleo gluten-free, low-carb, Mediterranean diet, and Whole 30, among dozens of other food-styles in vogue in 2018.
Consumers say the number one food factor is sugar, followed by carbohydrates which are increasingly blamed. 3 in four people are limiting or avoiding sugars in their diet, using tactics like drinking more water than soda or juices and no
Be aware that primary care providers are already switched-on to this idea. The first employee-hat that primary care doctors would bring on staff if they had resources to do so wouldn’t be another doctor or nurse — that person would be a dietitian or nutritionist, based on a recent PwC survey on re-imagining primary care, 
