Health Promotion Makes Strange Bedfellows (or Why No One Can Do It Alone)

Last week I attended a truly remarkable invitation-only event on wellness and health promotion. The key highlights are posted to my main blog on Trusted.MD Network.

Big Task Weekend (BTW) brought together senior executive leaders of the business and civic organization with the potential and willingness to contribute to improving America's health. The format of the conference evoked comparison to the venerable World Economic Forum in Davos. In fact BTW founder, Keith Ferrazzi has been to Davos himself and was named a "Global Leader for Tomorrow".

Why did I think the event was so remarkable and what ChangeNow4Health can learn from it?

The most eye-opening observation was that while literally every attendee had a lot to contribute to the discussion on health improvement, less than half of participating organizations could be classified as "healthcare companies". This should not come as a surprise, given that health and wellness are highly dependent on lifestyle, as I wrote earlier. This means that literally every non-health industry can do something to contribute to health.

What are the examples of these "strange bedfellows", by industry and attending company?

• Food: Del Monte, Kraft and Mars have tremendous power in affection nation's health when they set priorities for their products.
• Retail: Safeway and their peers have a lot of say over making sure healthy foods get enough promotion on store shelves.
• Entertainment: Telemundo, Disney, ABC and NBC can help motivate people towards healthy lifestyle by making it fun and hip.
• Local Government: Mayor's Offices (Los Angeles, Jackson, MS and Fresno, CA) provide local channels to disseminate wellness programs
• Education: Scholastic has lots of influence to include health promotion to school textbooks
• Self-Actualization: Motivators like Tony Robbins and Guru Singh (pictured with yours truly) inspiring people for a living

Of course these leaders outside of healthcare can be most effective when partnered with the healthcare industry, represented at the conference by PhRMA, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente and AARP, to name only a few.

The most interesting ideas were born through "mixing up" different perspectives

What this means is that improving nation's health is something that requires a big tent with every voice heard. Large organizations can bring to bear their resources and market / community footprint. Startups and passionate individuals can bring ideas and know-how. Mixed together this can translate into many projects, benefiting the society, the sponsors and the individual champions - as I saw happening before my eyes.

I found the idea flow very engaging and the interest level in engaging blogs and social media communities very encouraging.