Products April 16, 2007

AOL's Steve Case Embarks on Consumer Medical Web Site

April 16, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - America Online founder Steve Case is launching a consumer medical Web site that he hopes will be able to hold its weight in a market already heavy with players such as WebMD.com and NIH.gov.
Reported by

According to the New York Times, some of the features of RevolutionHealth.com include:

  • 1,500 medical conditions that can be sorted by the ailment or treatment, with related comments from experts and from other users of the site.
  • Information from the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and Harvard Medical School, which also have their own popular Web sites.
  • A directory of doctors by specialty and location, along with short reviews by patients.
  • The ability for users to create their own pages within RevolutionHealth.com for collecting personal and general information, which they can keep private or share as they choose.

The site will have its official debut Thursday and is part of Revolution Health Group, which Case founded two years after AOL’s ill-fated merger with Time Warner. According to the newspaper, the company’s other medical ventures include a stake in the growing RediClinic chain of retail health clinics operating in some Wal-Mart stores, Walgreen’s and other retail outlets around the country.

The Web site will be aimed primarily at women, who make up the lion’s share of Web health users. The site will have a Mom Central page for busy mothers who are trying to juggle their health, their children’s health, etc.

RevolutionHealth.com will also promote personal health records by giving consumers a place to assemble their medical information, bringing the company in line with efforts by others such as WebMD.com and insurers such as Aetna, the Times reported.

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Benefits April 13, 2007

TV Dinners Create a Mized Message

April 11, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Some family time around the dinner table can be a good thing - just don't watch the television at the same time.
Reported by

That’s the uptake from a new study that found, at least in low-income families with preschool children, the positive effect of eating dinner as a family tends to be negated by watching television at the same time.

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“When you have the television on, people are essentially eating alone,” said Arlene Spark, associate professor of nutrition at Hunter College in New York City, according to HealthNet News.

The findings essentially corroborate previous research that has found, among other things, that preschoolers who spend more time glued to the television have worse diets and that families dining together tend to have better eating habits.

Eating More, Eating Better?

Apparently when that TV is on, we’re just not paying attention to what we eat – and how much we are eating. But when we eat with family, we tend to eat better.

For this study, more than 1,300 parents or guardians of children participating in New York’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children were surveyed on how many days a week the family ate dinner together, the number of days each week the TV was turned on during dinner, and how often fruits and vegetables were served.

More fruits and vegetables were served on the nights families ate dinner as a unit – however, those servings decreased each night the TV was turned on during the meal.

The study also found that:

  • Hispanic and black parents reported having the television on during dinner more often than white parents.
  • Hispanic and white families tended to eat together more often than black families.
  • The television was turned on more often in families in which the parent had less than a high school education.

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