Category Archives: Health education

Nature Deficit Disorder ‘Damaging Britain’s Children’

Not just Britain’s children, is it?  岂只是英国的儿童?

 

By Richard Black, Environment correspondent, BBC News, 29 March 2012

UK children are losing contact with nature at a “dramatic” rate, and their health and education are suffering, a National Trust report says.

Traffic, the lure of video screens and parental anxieties are conspiring to keep children indoors, it says.

"Nature lesson" for children

Evidence suggests the problem is worse in the UK than other parts of Europe, and may help explain poor UK rankings in childhood satisfaction surveys.

The trust is launching a consultation on tackling “nature deficit disorder”.

“This is about changing the way children grow up and see the world,” said Stephen Moss, the author, naturalist and former BBC Springwatch producer who wrote the Natural Childhood report for the National Trust.

“The natural world doesn’t come with an instruction leaflet, so it teaches you to use your creative imagination.

“When you build a den with your mates when you’re nine years old, you learn teamwork – you disagree with each other, you have arguments, you resolve them, you work together again – it’s like a team-building course, only you did it when you were nine.” Read more »

Understanding California’s Demographic Shifts

From The Stanford Center on Longevity
Age Structure by Race and Ethnicity
Age Structure by Race and Ethnicity

Under the direction of Senior Research Scholar Adele Hayutin, the Stanford Center on Longevity has produced a study of California’s changing demographics. The report includes demographic profiles of more than 200 communities in California, illustrating shifts in age structure and changes in ethnic and racial composition. The project was developed for the California State Library to facilitate greater understanding of how demographic characteristics differ across the state and to help inform decisions regarding changing needs of local communities.

Read more »

Can Computer Games Be Good For Your Health?


Playing Farmville won’t make you fit.

However, serious injuries can benefit from serious games.

Not convinced? Check out two exhibits at San Francisco’s Swissnex, Think Art – Act Science (through 11/12) and Swiss Game Design Exhibition (through 10/27).

Both exhibits showcase technologies and collaborations between Swiss companies and academic institutions. Companion events are free to the public and include stimulating topics such as Next Level Health: How Games Improve Health and Healthcare.

My favorite demo was for a game created at the Zurich University of the Arts called GABARELLO v1.0.

The game is designed for children who have experienced lower body motor loss, through birth defects, accidents, etc. Children (or adults) are strapped to a special rehabilitation robot on a treadmill and through the use of sophisticated sensors, make the adorable virtual robot “move” across the various surfaces of a planet. This turns rehab work into a treat!

Other partners in the collaboration include University Children’s Hospital Zurich, the Institute for Neuropsychology (University of Zurich) and the Sensory Motor Systems Lab (ETH Zurich).

Successful collaborations like these are a roadmap for what is possible. With the ubiquity of platforms such as X-Box and Wii, look for this exciting trend to continue.

HealthCamp SFBay 2011: Accelerating Healthcare Innovation

Clinicians, technologists, community leaders and entrepreneurs gathered last week to exchange ideas at Health Camp SFBay.

In this “un-conference” format, participants propose and select topics to discuss in small breakout groups.

This year‘s theme was accelerating healthcare innovation. Groups discussed issues and potential solutions ranging from low tech methods for promoting healthy populations (aka the broccoli revolution) to high tech solutions like virtual reality for training patients and clinicians.

Self-tracking was another dominant theme.  Several groups, including members from the Quantified Self movement, formed to discuss how to collect, manage and use their own data. One participant detailed an experiment using an ingestible sensor (the size of a small pill) that transmits signals to a patch worn on her torso. Data from both the patch and sensor are then sent to a mobile phone for further processing.

Another common theme coalesced around trust–from the storage and appropriate usage of data to the validity of content found in online searches.

Mobile devices and social media were also prominent themes–15 participants “live tweeted” the event–and, several groups formed around how to best use the tools within these devices for health data.

Whether using high or low tech approaches, the entire group agreed that a person’s health doesn’t stop at the doctor’s office and that all patients are becoming more engaged in prevention and health management.

photo courtesy of Mike Doeff

 

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