By Venus Wong, PhD, BCBA, Sarah Rosenbaum, MD, MPH, Winnie Sung, MBChB,Robert M. Kaplan, PhD, Nicholas Bott, PhD, Terry Platchek, MD, Arnold Milstein, MD,Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH We were pleased to see our Building Better Caregivers® (BBC) program as part of a New England Journal of Medicine catalyst publication where the authors present the […]
By Carrie Pittman Maria Pfeiffer was a student studying behavior change models including the Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP) when she was unexpectedly diagnosed with a chronic condition. The intersection of her life’s work and her personal life was illuminated by the benefits of peer support — the very foundation of her studies. […]
This Fall, VA Caregiver Support Services will be expanding their program of comprehensive assistance for family caregivers. Over the last 6 years, our Building Better Caregivers® (BBC) program has been available to all Caregivers who are caring for a Veteran from any era. To date over 9,000 Caregivers have enrolled in Building Better Caregivers. The […]
This month, we celebrate the life of our colleague Kathleen Mahoney who passed away in early August. Like many of our peers, Kathleen had facilitated our online workshops for close to a decade helping hundreds of workshop participants and was a close colleague and friend to many. She was a seasoned facilitator and became a […]
Earlier this month, I was Chair of the DTx West Conference. This was the seventh in the US based series – one occurring each half year and alternating between Boston and the Bay Area. It has been truly special to see the Digital Therapeutics industry evolve and mature over these several years, and it was […]
By Katy Plant The New Year is a chance at a fresh start. Many of us set New Year’s resolutions with good intentions wanting to get the year off to a successful start. For those that set an intention or resolution to make changes to their health, they may find themselves signing up for […]
By Katy Plant As we’ve discussed in the past, we’re committed to ensuring as great a user experience as we can for our program participants. This means not only a rigorous process of user testing prior to launching new features, but a continuous process of reviewing feedback. Recently, we reviewed the self-reported reasons participants […]
By Brent Vaughan, CEO and Co-Founder, Cognoa We are experiencing a mental health crisis:one person in every four in the world will develop one or more behavioral conditions during their lifetime. Today in the U.S., one in five children have a diagnosable behavioral health disorder and only 21% of those children receive needed treatment. […]
MD Magazine recently sat down with Canary Health’s Chief Medical Officer, Neal Kaufman, to discuss digital health, the benefits of, and the role it plays in the future of healthcare. Read the Article
The success of many therapies for chronic diseases depends in large part on the ability of patients to follow often-complicated self-care regimens. Patients face many challenges when attempting to implement these recommendations such as multiple co-morbidities, physical limitations, lack of resources, poor social support, lack of confidence or skills, and insufficient knowledge. It is not […]
Interview of Dr. Marcus Thygeson, M.D., M.P.H. by Adam Kaufman As defined on Wikipedia: Peer support occurs when people provide knowledge, experience, emotional, social or practical help to each other. It commonly refers to an initiative consisting of trained supporters… and can take a number of forms such as peer mentoring, reflective listening (reflecting […]
Increasing self-efficacy – one’s capacity to identify actions that improve one’s life and the confidence to accomplish those actions – has been shown to:1 Accelerate health behavior change (e.g. healthy eating, medication adherence) Reduce depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders Diminish social isolation Improve system navigation and health program uptake Importantly, the impact of self-efficacy […]
Self-efficacy, or confidence as it is commonly known, is the optimistic self-belief in one’s competence or chances of successfully accomplishing a task and producing a favorable outcome. Self-efficacy is certainly worth having because as Henry Ford famously put it, “Whether you believe you can or you cannot, you are right.” Gandhi perfectly understood the central […]
I first get snippets of Jen’s story from the Better Choices, Better Health® (BCBH) user survey she completed. She writes: “So my situation was unique because I’m a registered nurse. As a nurse, you’re always helping other people and don’t tend to deal with your own stuff. I had taken care of my elderly […]
It’s the afternoon in Los Angeles and already the evening in Baltimore on Thursday, June 6th when I connect with Suzanne for our Slack call. “It is 2009, and I am working full time for the Baltimore County Department of Aging and I have a part-time job in addition. Being so busy I didn’t […]
Neal had the opportunity to participate in the National Council on Aging’s Age + Action conference this June. Age+Action is the premiere national conference focused on ensuring every person’s right to age with their best possible health and economic security. The event brought together 900+ professionals from across the country who are dedicated to making aging […]
Sharing another partnership this month — Washington, DC Department of Health. Please help us spread the word. DC Health is covering the costs for our Better Choices, Better Health®(BCBH) program for hundreds of district residents. They are making the program available without cost to a limited number of Washington, DC residents. Interested participants can […]
Catasys, Inc., a leading AI and technology-enabled healthcare company, is piloting Canary Health’s Better Choices, Better Health® (BCBH) program with eligible members of one of its national health plan partners. Read the Press Release Schedule A Meeting
Sharing some good news and an ask of a favor. The New Mexico Department of Health has funding for health improvement activities, and is making Canary Health’s Better Choices, Better Health® program available without cost to a limited number of New Mexico residents. Interested participants can register here: Register This is the second […]
In May, we were fortunate enough to bring together a variety of stakeholders for a Service Blueprint exercise with the Caregiver Support team from the Department of Veteran Affairs. The group included VA Peers Support Mentors, front line Call Center Support staff, VA Caregiver Support Specialists, as well as Caregivers themselves. From these exercises, we’re […]
—“Only the fact that there are others out in this great big world, going through the same things/feelings and rough patches as I am.” This is how Audrey starts the last of our several email exchanges after I have asked her what was her most important takeaway from Better Choices Better Health® (BCBH). We’ve […]
This month we feature an article by C.J. Sieck, et al, The Patient Engagement Capacity Model: What Factors Determine a Patient’s Ability to Engage? Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst, Sieck et al start their article describing the “Promise and Challenge of Patient Engagement” and then proceed to present their “Engagement Capacity […]
When we’re on the phone, Judy explains that she wanted to make sure her mother-in-law would already be asleep. She had scheduled our call for late Tuesday night – well late for the east coast, but 6pm in Los Angeles. Judy has been a caregiver for many years, first for her own parents and now […]
This month we’re pleased to share insights from one of our newer partners – Salt Lake County. Salt Lake County covers about 800 square miles and is home to more than 1.1 million people. The County is a diverse government employer with more than 30,000 employees. In collaboration with the Utah Department of Health, Salt […]
Individual behavior change is often central to enhancing quality of life and improving health. This includes adopting healthier habits around diet, physical activity, sleep, and other core individual behaviors. It includes new tactics to improve social interactions with family and friends and with healthcare providers. And it often includes new medical-related behaviors such as medication […]
DTx West took place at the end of February and serves as a great reminder of just how far the broader industry and the digital therapeutics segment have come. Topics included the regulatory environment and pathways for digital therapeutics, commercialization strategies, and partnership approaches. I had the good fortune to moderate an incredible panel with […]
We were glad to see the interest in Paul’s article from last month’s Canary Health newsletter about designing digital interventions to highlight behavioral modeling. Providing behavioral modeling is one of the key approaches to increasing an individual’s self-efficacy — i.e. the confidence in one’s ability to set a goal and accomplish it. Increasing self-efficacy has […]
At the beginning of 2019, a number of executives in healthcare were asked to share their thoughts on a new effort to fund Medicaid through block grants and the argument that it may spur innovation. Here’s the article if you missed it. Read the Article
It’s late afternoon in Los Angeles, early evening in Dallas, when I connect with Thelma by phone. I hear her energy and enthusiasm, and with a smile on my face and a small chuckle, we get right to her story. Thelma, wrestling with the anxiety that comes from surviving cancer, shares that she joined […]
The core outcome of the Better Choices, Better Health® (BCBH) program is to increase participants’ self-efficacy. Across the entire program we’re deliberate about how we design not only to engage and delight our participants, but also to ensure we increase their self-efficacy. In 1977[i] Albert Bandura defined self-efficacy as “the belief in one’s capabilities to […]