Healthy Future US Blog

We want to reduce the stigma of obesity.  And we want to improve health.  So how about focusing on fitness not "fatness"?   As we head toward the majority of adults with obesity in the coming decades, it is increasingly self-harming for our society to stigmatize large bodies.  Yet as our health worsens, we need to take urgent sustained action to develop healthier habits.  How do we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory issues? I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of anxiety & depression among Americans, especially teens, is due to weight & body shape.  The increase in child & adult obesity is spreading the stress, even as it becomes more normal to be obese.  At the same time, as obesity becomes more widespread, some of the stigma is receding--with the potential good-news/bad-news downside of less motivation for people to do something about dangerous extra weight causing metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, etc....

Can you have a better A-Team than this?   Amazon, Chase & Berkshire Hathaway joint venturing  via a new nonprofit, Haven, to finally solve our health care problems!   While I was hopeful when this joint venture was announced several years ago, I was also deeply skeptical.  Rather than addressing the root causes of health costs, such as inactivity and unhealthy nutrition, Haven tried  to "develop new ways to improve access to primary care, simplify insurance coverage and make prescription drugs more affordable"--including by throwing a lot of "big data" tech innovations at these issues. While this approach was pitched as a breakthrough, it was more of a Disease Management 2.0--focusing on more cost-efficient "care," rather than less chronic conditions to begin with.  The latter is the ultimate solution, but requires far more than blue-chip brands plus high-tech to resolve--and a lot more time.   2-3 years of effort just scratches the ...