Archive for February, 2009

The Business of Health Care: Part 2 – Resources

February 20th, 2009 | post a comment

As increasing health care costs and a growing number of uninsured Americans puts financial pressure on both individuals and businesses, we’ll return to our ongoing look at the landscape of health care reform. As the Obama administration prepares to address health care, we’ll look for ways that walk-in clinics and primary health care providers can help solve the nation’s health care crisis on this week’s Business Matters.

Listen to the Full Episode | Download MP3

Part 1: Sandy Ryan, Chief Nurse Practitioner Officer , Take Care Clinic | Download MP3

Take Care Health Systems is a part of Walgreens Health and Wellness division, and it includes both “Take Care Consumer Solutions”, at some Walgreens drug stores and “Take Care Employer Solutions,” which handles work-based health services. Take Care Health is expanding access to care to the medically underservered, s it attempts to provide access to high-quality, affordable and convenient health care to all individuals able to visit a Walgreens drug store. Currently, there are more than 250 Take Care Clinics around the country, each of which is managed by Take Care Health Services, while Take Care Employer Solutions manages primary care and occupational health centers at over 360 different workplaces in the United States.

Sandy Ryan has over 24 years of nursing experience in various settings, from charge nurse to director of ambulatory services to pediatric nurse practitioner. She served 16 years as a nurse corps officer in the United States Air Force. She’s also the winner of the 2007 Nancy Sharp Cutting Edge Award from the American College of Nurse Practitioners for her contributions to the profession of Nurse Practioners. As Chief Nurse Practitioner Officer for Take Care Health Systems, Ryan is one of six founding officers and she’s the first Chief Nurse Practitioner Officer in the convenient care industry.

Part 2: Kelly Carter, COO, Illinois Primary Health Care Association | Download MP3

Kelly Carter is the Chief Operating Officer of the Illinois Primary Health Care Association (IPHCA,) a nonprofit trade association that serves as Illinois’ sole primary care association and a member of the National Association of Community Health Centers. IPHCA represents the community health centers (CHCs) that were created by Congress in the 1960’s to provide health care to under-served communities and high-risk patients, regardless of their ability to pay.

The IPHCA is taking part in the Access for All Americans plan to raise–from 18 to 30 million–the number of Americans served by community health centers. As this plan, the IPHCA launched Access Illinois, which aims to provide a medical home to 2.1 million Illinoisans by the year 2015.

Part 3: Jay Parkinson, MD, Doctor, Hello Health | Download MP3

Jay Parkinson is a doctor at Hello Health, a clinic in New York City that’s using information technology to increase doctor-patient contact and provide affordable health care and medical services to more patients on a flexible schedule. For example, Hello Health uses e-mail, instant messaging and video chat to handle simple questions and follow-ups and allow patients to maintain a relationship with a team of doctors.

Jay Parkinson has done two residencies, one as pediatrician at St. Vincent’s in the West Village and one at Johns Hopkins in preventive medicine. He’s also worked as an FDA watchdog for the group Public Citizen. His medical practice is now based in Brooklyn and combines digital technology with traditional house calls. We spoke to Jay about ways that technology can be used to help solve the crisis of access to health care and a lack of primary care physicians.

The Business of Health Care: Part 2

February 20th, 2009 | post a comment

Listen to the Full Episode | Download MP3

Part 1: Sandy Ryan, Chief Nurse Practitioner Officer , Take Care Clinic | Download MP3

Part 2: Kelly Carter, COO, Illinois Primary Health Care Association | Download MP3

Part 3: Jay Parkinson, MD, Doctor, Hello Health | Download MP3

View the full details…

Change is in the air with School Lunch Programs

February 13th, 2009 | post a comment

As we were working on our program on school lunches, I found that I am more hopeful than I expected. In many ways, school lunches haven’t changed much since my experiences in the 60s. The same menus and the same attitude about lunches – they are a necessary part of the school experience but not an important part.

What we found is that the largest force in creating our school lunch programs is the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA provides funding and products for 95% of the schools in America. The underlying system is one that is shaped by the agricultural lobby in support of factory style farming. This program went into high gear during the Reagan years and has been largely unchanged since.

It is a program that rewards overproduction by providing a guaranteed market. This market is not the traditional consumer market or the fast food industry, it is for our kids. Look at the lunch menu of most schools, and you will find the usual suspects – hamburgers, beef ravioli, mac & cheese, hot dogs, pizza. Accompaniments are offered, such as vegetables, but you find that the kids don’t really eat much of those. Instead, they load up on ‘comfort food’.

The USDA nutrition guidelines are focused on the menu rather than what’s actually consumed. This disparity creates an imbalance in what kids eat, and this imbalance has several effects. Teachers notice that their students often lack energy in the afternoon. No wonder, when they have a carbohydrate centered lunch. The other effect is obesity. More and more of our young people are obese. The habits of eating are a major contributor to this rising crisis.

In schools, we often don’t realize that what our kids eat is as important as their math or English class. What they eat sets patterns for the rest of their life. Schools can play a significant role in educating children’s palates on what’s good for them. This education can help re-write their attraction to what tastes good, and may not be very healthy.

During our program on school lunches, we talk to some people who are making a difference in school lunches in two ways. The first is that they are committed to providing kids with healthy, fresh food that tastes great. Through building a trusting relationship with students and treating them as guests, food programs are being offered where children arrive home from school still full from lunch, and they eat a small evening meal.

The second outcome of these innovative programs is fostering the local family farm. By buying local (within 150 miles) produce, school lunch programs get great quality, fresh food that the students love. They are also creating a consistent market for farmers that encourages them to plant more, and gives them an outlet beyond the summer-only farmer’s markets.

We will be following up with other companies who are primary suppliers of school lunch programs to see if they can aim their aspirations in the same direction of these courageous and innovative people on our program today.

The Business of School Lunch – Resources

February 13th, 2009 | 1 comment

On this week’s Business Matters, we bring you a whole show on ways that we can improve our school lunch programs. We’ll find out if it’s possible to serve healthy, natural and affordable lunches to children in an institutional setting, and give you tips on how you can get your local school district to adopt more healthy and sustainable practices.

Listen to the Full Episode | Download MP3

Part 1: Helene York Director, Bon Appetit Foundation | Download MP3

helen_york Helene York is director of the Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation, an educational organization whose mission is to educate consumers, chefs, and food service managers about how their food choices affect the environment and the livelihoods of traditional food producers. The foundation was formed in 2005 to help identify sustainable food supply practices, opportunities and to help implement them.

Bon Appétit Management Company, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, provides on-site restaurant services at private colleges, universities, corporations and cultural venues in 28 states. In existence for 20 years, it is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Compass Group, the largest food service provider in the U.S. and worldwide with global headquarters in Great Britain. Bon Appétit is known for pioneering environmentally and socially responsible practices and then sharing operational know-how to sister companies within Compass Group and the food service industry at-large.

The Foundation’s first major project was a partnership with Seafood Watch of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The result was a Compass Group North America commitment to procure sustainable seafood, improve environmental practices of major seafood suppliers, and educate consumers at their accounts. Annually, more than one million pounds of unsustainable seafood have NOT been served since the policy was adopted.

Helene designed the second project, called the Low Carbon Diet, which is the first national program to highlight the significant connection between food and climate change. Synthesizing dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles about energy and emissions in food, she outlined in January of 2006 how the food system’s fossil fuel dependency and inherent emissions should be the next frontier of defining sustainable food.

Helene’s background is as an internal agent within Fortune 100 companies to achieve environmental and social justice goals through their operations. In the early 1990s she worked with scientists from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Natural Resources Defense Council to implement a cutting-edge energy efficiency program in 20 million square feet of institutional real estate owned by a leading financial services company for which she was an asset manager.

Part 2: Chef Bobo Executive Chef, Calhoun School | Download MP3
bobo-headshot-cropped

Chef Bobo (aka Robert Surles), a graduate of the French Culinary Institute is currently Executive Chef and Food Service Director for the Calhoun School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where he is spearheading a revolution in what kids eat for lunch. He is cooking natural and healthy food that features bold flavors and good nutrition as the cornerstone of his menu plan. Everything is made from scratch with the freshest of ingredients.

Chef Bobo’s philosophy is simple, “If you give kids interesting food that’s been seasoned well and cooked well, they’re going to love it… and this has been a love affair. He has reeducated the palettes of more than 2500 kids in grades two through 12 and has them clamoring for rutabaga fries, steamed kale, brussels sprouts, roasted fish filets, hummus, teriyaki roasted tofu, fiddlehead ferns and all sorts of healthy and delicious meals in moderate sized portions.

Prior to taking the position at the Calhoun School, Chef Bobo, whose nickname is a derivative of Bob, worked for almost two years as an Assistant Chef Instructor at the French Culinary Institute. He is the Chef/Owner of Chef Bobo Catering Co, which he started in 1988. His goal is to develop young palates toward understanding good food so that eating well becomes a lifelong skill. Many of his flavorful and nutritious recipes can be found in his book, Chef Bobo’s Good Food Cookbook. (Meredith Books)

Part 3: Bob Bloomer Regional VP, Chartwells Thompson Hospitality | Download MP3

Bob Bloomer manages Chartwells Thompson’s contract with Chicago Public Schools. In 2005, they became the first single vendor for Chicago Public Schools’ food services, after running several of CPS’s 6 regions since 2000. Chartwells, a division of Charlotte-based Compass Group, provides dining services for over 875 colleges, universities, public and private schools around the Country.

Part 4: Amy Audiffred Director of Operations, Bon Appetit Management at Wheaton College & Marco Hetterich Executive Chef at Wheaton College | Download MP3

Bon Appetit Management Company handle the food service contract for Wheaton Colleges, and have been so successful that they were ranked #1 for best campus food from the Princeton Review last year. Producer Jonah Meadows visited Wheaton College to hear how they’ve been able to do it.

The Business of School Lunch

February 13th, 2009 | post a comment

Listen to the Full Episode | Download MP3

Part 1: Helene York Director, Bon Appetit Foundation | Download MP3

Part 2: Chef Bobo Executive Chef, Calhoun School | Download MP3

Part 3: Bob Bloomer Regional VP, Chartwells Thompson Hospitality | Download MP3

Part 4: Amy Audiffred Director of Operations, Bon Appetit Management at Wheaton College & Marco Hetterich Executive Chef at Wheaton College | Download MP3

View the full details…

It’s Really Simple

February 10th, 2009 | post a comment

I’m sorry, but it’s really simple. The reason that we are getting fatter as a nation, and lagging behind 29 other countries in longevity, is that we have given the responsibility for our health over to someone else.

My parents grew up in central Illinois. They ate lots of fresh food that was prepared in the same way by generations of grandmas. This good food helped them be healthy and active. They never considered going out to eat as a “way of life”. As children of the depression, they were grateful for having food on the table and not worrying about where they would sleep.

Fast forward 70 years and what do we find? We are a nation that has moved from having fresh food as its main stay to a nation that is addicted to sweet, prepared food. There are lots of economic and social reasons for this change. What is not well understood is that there is also a business interest at play here.

In our recent Business Matters program on the impact of sweeteners, I discovered that until 1978 the percentage of the U.S. population that was obese didn’t change. In 1978, a growth in obesity began and it has accelerated.

I know there is a belief that there is no magic answer to the problem of obesity, and to some extent I accept that. However, I felt there was something at cause that if it were changed could reverse this trend.

I got to wondering about when High Fructose Corn Syrup was introduced into our foods. I found that it made its way into baby formula in the mid-70s. Coke switched from sugar to HFCS in the mid-80s. I looked at a number of websites about what foods HFCS is in and found it’s in about everything we eat that is processed.

There are some facts that most of us don’t think about with regard to HFCS. It is a highly subsidized farm product. Its use spread as farm subsidies drove its price down. So naturally, companies switched from sugar to HFCS because it was both cheap and easy (as a liquid it is easier to handle in mass-production).

I want to say right now I do not feel that HFCS is the culprit of our obesity crisis. I do think it is a symptom and that is my point. It is a symptom of a change in our choices about food. It is a symptom of our decision that fast and cheap is more important than healthy and carefully prepared. It is a symptom of our choice to expose our bodies to the effects of sweeteners from infancy.

We spend more than any other country on health care, and yet we have sicker folks and shorter lives than people in many other countries. The solution is reforming our way of life. This must be the focus of any change that will have an impact on health care reform.

We must move from delegating the responsibility for the nourishing of ourselves and our children to others, to assuming full responsibility ourselves. By assuming responsibility, we take control of the health of our families. We prod our school systems to do a better job in the food choices our kids have. We make meals at home so that we remember what’s in the food, and our kids can re-educate their palates. We can stop putting things in our mouth that are not good for us (what is the value to our bodies of drinking an 800 calories super-sized soda?).

When we resume our responsibility for what we eat, amazing things happen. Our health improves. Our vitality increases. We start getting a sense of wonder about our world and the gifts we have.

There will be some fallout, of course. For you, it may mean that you have to remember (or learn) how to prepare food. Initially, like anything new, it will seem like it takes more time. Don’t be discouraged, the payoff is real and comes quickly.

In the corporate world there will also be consequences. If we cut back on discretionary food that has no real nutritional value, the companies that produce that food will be impacted along with their suppliers. That’s ok though. They will figure out what you find to be of value to you and offer that.

There is no better time than now to step up to this responsibility. You will find in the end you’ll save some money, and the money you have will be better used for things that truly matter to your quality of life.

Living in a Bubble

February 6th, 2009 | post a comment

A few months ago I was reading an article in the The Atlantic titled, Infectious Exuberance. The article is about the factors that led to the meltdown in the housing market. What caught my attention was the way the author spoke about mood. As a student of cultures, I see the strong dynamic that mood plays for whatever culture I may be a member of. It could be the community where I live, the church I attend or the company where I work.

Robert Shiller, pointed out that the underlying factor that is always present in similar situations of a boom is contagious optimism. When we had the Internet bubble bust in 2001, we could track the contagious optimism that guided the decisions of investors who felt that the market was going to continue to rise indefinitely. This same enthusiasm was at play when we felt that housing prices that had been rising rapidly in many areas would continue to do so.

When history is considered, it would show us that in a world of capitalism there has always been rise and fall. This rise and fall is predictable and absolute. So what is it that keeps us from seeing the inevitable when we are in what Shiller calls a bubble? He points out that these bubble are social phenomena. Going further, I feel they are a collective mindset that has a simple story attached to it, “you can get rich without creating anything of value yourself.”

This mindset is so intoxicating that you can only see a reality that supports the mindset. Those that are not infected by the mindset see the world much differently. The know about expansion and contraction and watch diligently for the inevitable change. I mention this to you because this same phenomena of bubbles can be at play in every aspect of our lives.

Now we are on the other side of the economic bubble, the bust part. It isn’t really much different than the boom. In the bust phase, we believe things will continue to get worse. This pessimism continues and, just like the boom phase, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy until it runs out of steam. Then the next boom cycle will begin.

There are some who say we are in such a down swing that the next up cycle won’t happen for six or seven years. I don’t know. What I do know is that we are in a time of adjustment. This boom thinking has run its course. This time around there are different characteristics than in previous busts. For example, for the most part everyone is affected no matter where they live. We have build a very interdependent social and economic system. In past bust cycles, the impact was felt in multiple places, but not everywhere. This is why it is difficult to predict when something will change to move out of the bust cycle and what the change will look like.

I am very curious to watch this cycle to see where it leads. What about you?

Until later,

Thomas

The Business of Sweeteners: Part 2

February 6th, 2009 | post a comment

On this week’s Business Matters, we bring you the second of a two-part series on the social and economic costs of our addiction to sweeteners. We’ll delve into the economic costs of having so much of our population obese. How much is it costing us in increased health care costs and lost productivity? Is there anything we can do to turn back the trend line?

Listen to the Full Episode | Download MP3

Part 1: Kenneth Stanton Economist, Obesity, Business and Public Policy | Download MP3

Part 2: LuAnn Heinen Vice-President, National Business Group on Health | Download MP3

View the full details…

The Business of Sweeteners: Part 2 – Resources

February 6th, 2009 | post a comment

Listen to the Full Episode | Download MP3

Part 1: Kenneth Stanton Economist, Obesity, Business and Public Policy | Download MP3

krs Dr. Stanton holds a Ph.D. in Finance, from York University, Toronto, Canada, an MBA in finance from the University of Rochester, Rochester NY, and a B.A. (Honors Economics) from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in economics, finance, statistics, and advanced graduate econometrics, since 1996. His is the coauthor and editor of a book addressing the economic and other effects of the obesity epidemic. Dr. Stanton has served in an advisory capacity at all three levels of government, including the State governments of Maryland, Illinois, North Carolina, and Texas. He recently served as Co-chair of the Baltimore City Council Task Force on the Prevention of Childhood Obesity. In relation to his research, Dr. Stanton has a high profile in the media, locally and nationally, with several appearances on CNN and other television networks. He has been quoted in over 300 media outlets across the US and abroad.

Part 2: LuAnn Heinen Vice-President, National Business Group on Health | Download MP3

LuAnn Heinen is responsible for the National Business Group on Health’s Patient Safety Initiative to promote safer hospital care through employer purchasing and governance strategies. She also leads the Institute on the Costs & Health Effects of Obesity. The Institute develops tools and resources for employer wellness and health promotion such as the Wellness Impact Scorecard, Healthy Dining/Vending/Catering assessments, employer best practices, incentives for healthy lifestyles and more. Each year, on behalf of the Business Group, the Institute recognizes leading U.S. employers with Best Employers for Healthy Lifestyles awards at the Platinum, Gold and Silver level. Before joining the Business Group in 2003, she headed Heinen HealthCare Associates LLC, held key roles at both UnitedHealth Group (Vice President, Center for Health Policy & Evaluation) and Chronimed (Divisional VP, Business Development), and consulted for The Lewin Group.

Archive for February, 2009

The Business of Health Care: Part 2 – Resources

The Business of Health Care: Part 2

Change is in the air with School Lunch Programs

The Business of School Lunch – Resources

The Business of School Lunch

It’s Really Simple

Living in a Bubble

The Business of Sweeteners: Part 2

The Business of Sweeteners: Part 2 – Resources

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