Diet and Nutrition. Natural Health, and Healthy Living

In this interview on “The Business Case for Health 2.0," Ken Shachmut, Senior VP Strategic Initiatives, Health Initiatives, and Health Re-engineering at Safeway, shares is thoughts on some of the highly impressive results that the company has obtained by introducing market-based health plans.

SS: Ken, thanks for making time today. Tell me a little about your background?

KS: I have been active as an executive and management consultant for over 30 years. I graduated from Princeton in Engineering and later obtained my MBA from Stanford. In consulting, I worked first with McKinsey & Company, later at Booz Allen Hamilton, and for awhile independently. I had done some consulting for Safeway. I later joined Safeway and have been there the last 15 years in various capacities.

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A spate of recent global news coverage on cognitive fitness and "brain training" reflects a growing interest in innovative interventions to keep our brains sharp as we age. This interest is very timely, given an aging population, the increasing prevalence of Alzheimer's, and the growing body of research linking a number of clinical conditions with specific cognitive deficits.

US brain fitness market: significant and growing

We estimate the size of the US brain fitness market was $225m in 2007 - more than double what it was in 2005. Consumers were responsible for most of the growth from 2005 to 2007, followed by health care and insurance providers. We estimate that the consumer segment grew from a few million in 2005 to $80m in 2007, and the health care/ insurance one from $35m to $65m, and foresee continued growth in both.

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The worldwide video gaming industry is a thriving business – with hardware and software sales reaching 43.5 billion in 2007 and projected to grow to more than 61 billion in the next 4 years. This growth isn’t propelled by just the latest teenage gaming craze, but by a variety of nontraditional organizations integrating video games, immersive simulations and virtual worlds to improve effectiveness and engagement across all business lines.

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I'm excited to let you all know that Johnson & Johnson has just launched a health channel on You Tube! It's called, creatively enough, the Johnson & Johnson health channel.

We've posted videos produced by Dr. Nancy Snyderman, presently an NBC-TV medial correspondent, who had worked at J&J for several years. She covers such topics as obesity, heart disease, cancer, and also reports on how to stay healthy with diet and fitness programs. In my opinion, the videos are excellent and have a lot of value. The videos are neither brand-related nor product-centric, though many of the videos cover disease states in which some of our operating companies participate.

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Since we launched Lumosity last year, we’ve heard lots of feedback from users saying you love the brain games, and the feeling of getting smarter and seeing your improvement. One thing many of you have requested is more exercises and games. Well, we’ve just raised $3 million from 2 top venture capital firms, as well as some really smart individual investors, in order to keep improving Lumosity so it’s always the best site for brain training.

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Employees are split on whether employer wellness programs intrude on privacy, according to an Issue Brief from the Center for Studying Health System Change (CSHC).

The report details the results of interviews conducted in 2007 in 12 metropolitan American communities: Boston, Cleveland, Greenville, Indianapolis, Lansing, Little Rock, Miami, northern New Jersey, Orange County, Phoenix, Seattle, and Syracuse.

Employee wellness programs are growing in the marketplace as employers try to stem ever-increasing costs, both direct and indirect. This is real money: a report from the American Hospital Association estimated that three chronic diseases — asthma, diabetes and hypertension — accounted for 164 million days of absenteeism each year which cost cost employers $30 billion.

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FORBES: Fed Chief Ben Bernanke fans the flames of health reform. "It's not just balancing the federal budget; it's really a much broader question of the stability and strength of our economy over a longer period of time," Benanke said.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: AMA turns thumbs down to secret medical shoppers. "It is grossly unethical," said Dr. Howard Chodash, a professor at Southern Illinois University Medical School.

WASH POST: "Halting runaway medical inflation represents a potential victory for all generations," wrote Sandra Day O'Connor and James R. Jones.

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