Huff & Puff: The Asthma App – “the world’s best asthma education app!” – released in free and premium versions for tablets and smart phones

Los Angeles, CA – May 21, 2013: Health Nuts Media (HNM), a health engagement company, announces the release of their app, Huff & Puff: The Asthma App, for recent versions of the iPad/iPod/iPhone and Android tablets and smart phones.

Based on their animated series, Huff & Puff: An Asthma Tale, the app takes the fun to a whole new level. HNM’s CEO, Tim Jones, explains that, “While our animated series has received rave reviews from patients, doctors, nurses, and health educators across the country, we knew we wanted to take the level of engagement up even higher. Adding games and quizzes helped us make it even more fun. “Gamification” of health information has been shown to be an effective way to engage people and improve their health literacy. With our app, people can learn without even knowing they’re doing so!” (more…)

Hal sat under the cool shade of his favorite Weeping Willow. He looked out upon the park’s small, but well-kept pond. A mother duck was leading her six ducklings across the serene water, gliding along almost effortlessly. (At least, it appeared effortless on top of the water, but he knew those little duck feet were churning away like mad under the surface.)

As he watched them sail across this tiny “sea,” he heard his little inner voice wondering about his recent mishap and thinking, “I feel so alone, so left out.”

He looked down at his still-throbbing right ankle, now wrapped in gauze and guarded by a black plastic contraption that looked like the back half of a black cowboy boot. (Well, sorta.) He could see, in his mind’s eye, the twist it took and the odd shape into which it formed when he had fallen. It had been an ugly sight and he shivered just thinking about it. It wasn’t broken, but it was a really bad sprain. He’d be out for weeks.

Now his basketball buddies were off at the regionals playing for a shot at the state title while he sat here, looking at ducks. He had fallen that morning, just messing around with his brother, Sal, playing a little one-on-one in their driveway. Unfortunately, that was also the morning they were leaving for the tournament. He was still in the emergency room when the team took off. He wondered, “Why did this have to happen?” Now the team was off to the tourney and he wasn’t. He felt so very alone. (more…)

Holistic, wholistic, alternative, complementary – whatever name you want to put on so-called “non-traditional” approaches to healthcare, rarely do you see them combined so seamlessly with “traditional” Western medicine as in Dr. Larry Rosen’s new book, Treatment Alternatives for Children: Reduce Serious Side Effects with Natural Equivalents to Conventional Remedies for Common Childhood Ailments (“TAfC” for short).

Just because it says “Natural” in the title, don’t expect some hippy-dippy, New Age collection of pyramids, crystals, and healing stones. Larry Rosen, MD, is a respected pediatrician, an alum of MIT, and a very grounded and practical clinician. Along with co-author Jeff Cohen, Dr. Rosen presents a well-balanced look at treatment alternatives for some 100 or so of the most common childhood ailments. The book combines traditional Western scientific methods with the cross-cultural and time-tested methods of healing help from a variety of sources. (more…)

According to a report issued by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) earlier this year, “Addressing health literacy is critical to transforming health care quality. Goals for safe, patient-centered, and equitable care cannot be achieved if consumers cannot access services or make informed health care decisions.”

Dean Schillinger, MD, chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH), was the senior author for for the paper based upon a study run at SFGH and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Schillinger notes, “Depending on how you define it, nearly half the U.S. population has poor health literacy skills.”

The importance of adequate health literacy has been demonstrated by numerous clinical studies. Health literacy is directly linked to health. People who have sufficient understanding of health information (more…)

Here’s a simple question: Why have the worlds of healthcare and “medicine” always avoided making health fun?

Here’s a simple answer: Making health fun just ain’t easy. (Please pardon the “ain’t.”)

Think about it. The worlds of health, healthcare, and medicine have long been owned by the elite. Typically, in years past, it was only the rich or privileged who were able to get medical training. Historically, the elite in their ivory towers of medical knowledge didn’t write down their wisdom for the general public; they wrote “scholarly” papers designed to talk in big terms using big words to “big” people with big vocabularies (and, many times, with big heads.) “It’s complicated, so it must be discussed with big words and in long, dull documents,” they said. And that is where they stopped. And that has become medical tradition.

Well, they were right…sort of. Health and the workings of the human body are pretty darn complex. There’s a whole lotta stuff going on inside of each of us. There’s a lot of “this thing connected to that thing causing the other thing to do some different thing.” We’re pretty amazing creatures full of complicated “machinery.”

But those medical elitists were wrong, too. Complicated or not, every single one of us has “health” (more…)

Health literacy and social media are a match made in heaven!

The power of social media and social networking has been dramatically highlighted by events all around the world. From toppling governments to funny flash mobs with their viral YouTube videos, social tools with their broad sweeping reach have shown a world-changing power almost unrivaled in human history. Certainly nothing has driven so much change, so many people to act or react with such immediacy, in such short time frames as have social media tools.

Health literacy skills in the U.S. are rather sad with only about 1 in 10 American adults having “proficient” health literacy. Around 93 million have only “basic” or “below basic” health literacy skills. This is in part due to general literacy skills which are themselves rather sad, according to the 2003 International Adult Literacy & Lifeskills Survey (published in 2005). Rima Rudd, Sc.D., from the Harvard School of Public Health, (more…)

236,000,000,000 dollars! That’s how much low health literacy costs Americans each and every year; global costs are incalculable. Health Nuts Media presents an animated white paper on the challenges of low health literacy as well as solutions for increasing health literacy and improving consumer engagement using entertainment and new media.

Learn how to address the health literacy challenge

Patient education needs to fine tune its focus.

Recent evidence reported in the journal Pediatrics shows that the biggest driver for getting kids to move more was simply how much vigorous activity their friends got during an after-school program. Kids imitate their friends in so many ways, so maybe this is no big surprise. Still, the fact that the kids didn’t choose their friends based upon level of activity, but rather tended to match the activity level of their friends points to some useful ways we might help fight obesity in children using the power of social ties.

The article, reviewed and summarized on MedPage Today, lends further credibility to the idea that the power of social media, and especially games tied to social networks, can become powerful combatants in our fight against childhood obesity. (more…)