.
At the 2016 Wellbeing Summit on Nutrition and Digital Health hosted by the Diplomatic Courier and Gallup, a wide range of speakers and panelists focused on a variety of topics including corporate employee wellness programs, creating community “urban farms,” and systems that allow patients to connect with doctors via text message and other “virtual” digital media platforms. Some speakers represented non-profit organizations that work with the government and private partnerships to improve wellbeing neighborhood by neighborhood. Other speakers called for systemic reform while focusing on the power of the private sector to address large-scale health problems in the public sphere.
One of the summit’s strengths was the diversity of perspectives presented by its speakers and panelists. For non-profit organizations like DC UrbanGreens, Inc. and Young Doctors DC, the work of improving food security and healthcare services in underserved communities does not—other than using social media platforms to reach a wider audience—rely upon digital solutions. By contrast, Senior Vice President of Business Development at CirrusMD Nicholas Assad and Vice President of Public Relations for Sodexo, Inc. Steve Cox place new technologies at the center of improving wellbeing.
Building Audiences with Social Media
Though not “in person” like the panelists on stage or the presenters at the podium, social media created a robust, worldwide discussion on Twitter. By the end of the day the summit reached over 19 million twitter impressions.
Throughout the day, in between the panels and presentations, the Diplomatic Courier’s CEO and Publisher Ana Rold announced updates on the number of Twitter impressions and notifications the event’s hashtags — #2050Health and #Worldin2050 — were accruing. While panelists sat on the stage, their Twitter handles were displayed alongside their names and job descriptions. Audience members were repeatedly encouraged to engage with the hashtags and with other Twitter users in order to further the discussions sparked by the summit’s speakers. At the Wellbeing Summit, social media engaged people in discussion beyond the podium and reached a wider audience than those present in the room.
Using Technology to Bridge the Doctor-Patient Gap
In the second panel of the summit, Fadesola Adetosoy, Global Healthcare Solutions Leader at Dell, Inc. addressed the topic of digital healthcare pointing out that “access to care is not everything.” According to Adetosoy, healthcare is not just clinical: it involves access to healthy food, having a nutrition plan to accompany medical treatment, and avoiding falls and accidents. Adetosoy’s assertion that healthcare stretches beyond the clinical transitioned perfectly into a point made later by Frances Dare, Managing Director of Virtual Health Practice at Accenture. Dare pointed to a website called “Big White Wall,” which allows people struggling with mental illness to anonymously express themselves in a public forum overseen by trained professionals. This mode of communication may break barriers of disclosure due to fear of human judgment and the “white coat” phenomenon. Dare also discussed the finding that people are more open to confiding in “robotic” doctors as opposed to face-to-face professionals for they may display negative non-verbal cues. She argues that these digital modes enhance the patient experience and give doctors the tools to handle their cases more effectively, benefiting both the system and the patient. Mediated experiences like these point to the promise of digital technology in improving medical care. Reducing the role and participation of doctors should not be the priority; rather the focus should be assisting them in performing their jobs.
Former US Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, for example, discussed the ability of innovative health information sharing to engage patients in managing their own healthcare. By simply allowing individuals to mediate the exchange and distribution of their healthcare records, they instantly become more engaged with the people providing their care and more knowledgeable about the care they are receiving. When a patient views their records on a platform of their own choosing, they are empowered to personalize their healthcare.
Technology in wellbeing, however, faces certain limitations. The individuals who have access to personal devices like smartphones and computers are financially privileged. Individuals who are financially disadvantaged do not have the same access and cannot benefit as much from technology’s relationship to wellbeing. This raises the question of whether technology only has the power to benefit the privileged few, especially in the world of digital health.
Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies
What the forum made clear was that we must first go to the places where people face the most significant challenges to their wellbeing. We must foster and encourage better health in poor and minority communities and work with a population that first needs to know the basics of healthcare. This is before we further serve more privileged classes via their existing technological resources, not to mention further enhancing their ability to buy healthier food and have more free time to exercise.
The first step to access in healthy living is creating healthy bodies and minds that can stay healthy on the most basic levels. And this must include education; teaching people where they’re getting their food and basic nutrition while also figuring out ways they too can gain access to the time and financial stability that can help them address their health problems, problems that include fundamentals like hunger.
Local, grassroots initiatives like Dreaming Out Loud and DC UrbanGreens which focus on community access and education in the Washington, DC area, as well as Action Against Hunger, which helps educate refugees on how to eat and get access to healthy foods in their new homes, are at the center of creating a true Wellbeing revolution, the kind that the Diplomatic Courier’s Summit seemed to be striving towards.
About the authors: Emily Chaumont, Iris Hyon, Drew Ingram, Josh Luckenbaugh, Lizzie Moore, Elizabeth Stephenson, and Sarah Ruiz are students in the William & Mary Summer Institute in New Media. Kayla Sharpe is the Teaching Assistant.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
a global affairs media network
Reflections on the Wellbeing Summit
July 12, 2016
At the 2016 Wellbeing Summit on Nutrition and Digital Health hosted by the Diplomatic Courier and Gallup, a wide range of speakers and panelists focused on a variety of topics including corporate employee wellness programs, creating community “urban farms,” and systems that allow patients to connect with doctors via text message and other “virtual” digital media platforms. Some speakers represented non-profit organizations that work with the government and private partnerships to improve wellbeing neighborhood by neighborhood. Other speakers called for systemic reform while focusing on the power of the private sector to address large-scale health problems in the public sphere.
One of the summit’s strengths was the diversity of perspectives presented by its speakers and panelists. For non-profit organizations like DC UrbanGreens, Inc. and Young Doctors DC, the work of improving food security and healthcare services in underserved communities does not—other than using social media platforms to reach a wider audience—rely upon digital solutions. By contrast, Senior Vice President of Business Development at CirrusMD Nicholas Assad and Vice President of Public Relations for Sodexo, Inc. Steve Cox place new technologies at the center of improving wellbeing.
Building Audiences with Social Media
Though not “in person” like the panelists on stage or the presenters at the podium, social media created a robust, worldwide discussion on Twitter. By the end of the day the summit reached over 19 million twitter impressions.
Throughout the day, in between the panels and presentations, the Diplomatic Courier’s CEO and Publisher Ana Rold announced updates on the number of Twitter impressions and notifications the event’s hashtags — #2050Health and #Worldin2050 — were accruing. While panelists sat on the stage, their Twitter handles were displayed alongside their names and job descriptions. Audience members were repeatedly encouraged to engage with the hashtags and with other Twitter users in order to further the discussions sparked by the summit’s speakers. At the Wellbeing Summit, social media engaged people in discussion beyond the podium and reached a wider audience than those present in the room.
Using Technology to Bridge the Doctor-Patient Gap
In the second panel of the summit, Fadesola Adetosoy, Global Healthcare Solutions Leader at Dell, Inc. addressed the topic of digital healthcare pointing out that “access to care is not everything.” According to Adetosoy, healthcare is not just clinical: it involves access to healthy food, having a nutrition plan to accompany medical treatment, and avoiding falls and accidents. Adetosoy’s assertion that healthcare stretches beyond the clinical transitioned perfectly into a point made later by Frances Dare, Managing Director of Virtual Health Practice at Accenture. Dare pointed to a website called “Big White Wall,” which allows people struggling with mental illness to anonymously express themselves in a public forum overseen by trained professionals. This mode of communication may break barriers of disclosure due to fear of human judgment and the “white coat” phenomenon. Dare also discussed the finding that people are more open to confiding in “robotic” doctors as opposed to face-to-face professionals for they may display negative non-verbal cues. She argues that these digital modes enhance the patient experience and give doctors the tools to handle their cases more effectively, benefiting both the system and the patient. Mediated experiences like these point to the promise of digital technology in improving medical care. Reducing the role and participation of doctors should not be the priority; rather the focus should be assisting them in performing their jobs.
Former US Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, for example, discussed the ability of innovative health information sharing to engage patients in managing their own healthcare. By simply allowing individuals to mediate the exchange and distribution of their healthcare records, they instantly become more engaged with the people providing their care and more knowledgeable about the care they are receiving. When a patient views their records on a platform of their own choosing, they are empowered to personalize their healthcare.
Technology in wellbeing, however, faces certain limitations. The individuals who have access to personal devices like smartphones and computers are financially privileged. Individuals who are financially disadvantaged do not have the same access and cannot benefit as much from technology’s relationship to wellbeing. This raises the question of whether technology only has the power to benefit the privileged few, especially in the world of digital health.
Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies
What the forum made clear was that we must first go to the places where people face the most significant challenges to their wellbeing. We must foster and encourage better health in poor and minority communities and work with a population that first needs to know the basics of healthcare. This is before we further serve more privileged classes via their existing technological resources, not to mention further enhancing their ability to buy healthier food and have more free time to exercise.
The first step to access in healthy living is creating healthy bodies and minds that can stay healthy on the most basic levels. And this must include education; teaching people where they’re getting their food and basic nutrition while also figuring out ways they too can gain access to the time and financial stability that can help them address their health problems, problems that include fundamentals like hunger.
Local, grassroots initiatives like Dreaming Out Loud and DC UrbanGreens which focus on community access and education in the Washington, DC area, as well as Action Against Hunger, which helps educate refugees on how to eat and get access to healthy foods in their new homes, are at the center of creating a true Wellbeing revolution, the kind that the Diplomatic Courier’s Summit seemed to be striving towards.
About the authors: Emily Chaumont, Iris Hyon, Drew Ingram, Josh Luckenbaugh, Lizzie Moore, Elizabeth Stephenson, and Sarah Ruiz are students in the William & Mary Summer Institute in New Media. Kayla Sharpe is the Teaching Assistant.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
