#MakeHealth was AMAZING – Hashtags of the Week (HOTW): (Week of August 18, 2014)

It's always a delight to have the opportunity to show off a University of Michigan event in these posts. It's even more of a delight to show off an event of which I was so intimately a part, even though I have to confess I feel like I did very little and it was the …

Keeping Patients in the Dark – Hashtags of the Week (HOTW): (Week of June 30, 2014)

Summer Institute for Informed Patient Choice: The legal and ethical implications of keeping patients in the dark: http://siipc.org/ You shape your Twitter experience through who you choose to follow. Everything else derives from this — the tweets you see, the suggestions for people to follow, the hashtags listed as trending, all of it. For me, …

Make Health Fest Coming August 16!

We Make Health Fest Saturday, Aug 16th, 2014 University of Michigan Palmer Commons, Great Lakes Rooms Short Description "A collaborative event for a local and virtual community interested in health, technology, and participatory design. Join us for a full day of health themed design and maker activities!" Longer Description Many types of events are being …

World Immunization Week

Immunize for a healthy future - Know. Check. Protect. This week marks World Immunication Week 2014.  World Immunization Week is designed to remind people about the effectiveness of vaccination. According to the World Health Organization:  2 - 3 million deaths are avoided through immunization vaccine preventable diseases include: anthrax, measles, rubella, tetanus, mumps, rubella, rabies …

Chemical Concerns : What is in My Makeup?

I was at the Ann Arbor YMCA the other day and overheard two women questioning the safety of chemicals used in makeup and other over the counter personal products. This conversation was prompted by someone's sunscreen running into their eyes, making them partially blind for a few minutes, causing her to wonder if there are …

“Smoking & Health” Turns 50 — Hashtags of the Week (HOTW): (Week of February 24, 2014)

It's pretty interesting that there have been so many different reports from the Surgeon General's Office, but if people simply say, "the Surgeon General's report" they mean the first one, from 1964, on Smoking and Health. I'm glad to see that the SGO is taking advantage of the 50th anniversary to release a new and …

Searching Your Symptoms: Three Things You Should Know

We all search our symptoms. We want to understand what's happening to our health and figure out what the next steps are. Rest and fluids? A trip to the doctor's office? There's lots of debate on the implications of this common practice, so I've singled out three things that the literature tells us to be …

Science in the News: Stop Taking Multivitamins

This blog post has two themes: 1.) Recent studies show that taking multivitamins doesn't actually have any positive impact on health outcomes 2.) Isn't it annoying how science is reported in the news? This morning as I was going through my twitter feed, I followed a tweet from the Detroit Free Press that said "Stop …

Providing Dental Care in Remote Corners

Alaska is 1/5 the size of the "lower 48".  It's population according to the 2012 census was a little less than 750,000 with large portions of the population living in small communities spread out across areas the size of the state of Oregon.  We have moved forward from the days of Balto and his sled …

An Emmy for “Life, Interrupted” videos

I've posted before about the amazing blog--written & video--that Suleika Jaouad has been composing for the last couple of years, "Life, Interrupted".  This year, the video segments were nominated by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for an Emmy in the News and Documentary category.  This week, the winner was announced & the team …