by Mike Critelli, 

Last year, Dr. Gary Welch and Colleen McGuire of Silver Fern Healthcare joined our MakeUsWell Network. Their tag line is “Human Understanding Unlocked.” Their business is focused on addressing a fundamental issue we must address if we are to have viable healthcare and health insurance systems and to have global competitiveness across a variety of fronts.

The United States throws more money at health and healthcare than any other nation in the world, and achieves horrible outcomes. We have the same pathology in our public education system as well, but this blog will just focus on the issue of health improvement.

When I was growing up, the way we thought about health was that we “got sick” through no fault of our own, either because of an infectious disease like pneumonia or a gastrointestinal condition from eating contaminated food. One of my grandmothers had diabetes and had one leg amputated below the knee, but I did not understand what caused it. At the time, we thought about diseases and illnesses as conditions that happened to us and over which we had little or no control. 

There were exceptions. We knew about alcoholism, drug addiction, and lung diseases from excessive smoking. I had uncles, aunts and cousins who had alcohol dependency or died of lung cancer. But we did not focus on obesity or the metabolic disorders to which it contributed. Hypertension, coronary artery disease, Type 2 diabetes, and cancers of our gastro-intestinal tract were not as common as they are today.

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by Mike Critelli, 

Introduction

Zoonotic diseases are infections transmitted from animals to humans. These diseases pose a significant global health threat, as evidenced by past outbreaks such as the Ebola virus, SARS, and bird flu outbreaks. With rapid globalization and increased human-animal interactions affecting disease transmission patterns, innovative solutions to detect and prevent zoonotic diseases are urgently needed. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool that can help monitor, predict, and mitigate the spread of zoonotic infections through advanced data analytics, machine learning, and automation. AI can be leveraged in the early detection, monitoring, and prevention of zoonotic disease transmission.  

AI in Early Detection of Zoonotic Diseases

One critical aspect of controlling zoonotic diseases is early detection. AI plays a pivotal role in analyzing vast amounts of data to identify patterns and predict potential outbreaks before they escalate. Several approaches illustrate how AI contributes to early detection:

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by Mike Critelli, 

Over the past month, the MakeUsWell Network has welcomed Dr. Garry Welch and Colleen McGuire, a married couple who have formed a company called Silver Fern Healthcare. Silver Fern’s mission is to use the best available evidence to identify the psychological and sociological factors that prevent patients from effectively managing their chronic diseases.

They have particularly focused more recently in addressing the root cause of many chronic diseases, the obesity crisis. Obesity not only contributes to chronic diseases, but, as research has demonstrated, it made those with the SARS Cov-2 virus more likely to be hospitalized or die. The inflammation caused by obesity has also been linked to cancer by the CDC because of the faster cell growth required to compensate for insulin resistance.

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by Mike Critelli, 

Recently, I was honored to meet an exceptionally inspirational person, Jennifer Dickenson. Jennifer is part of a very select group, individuals who have defied the odds and survived a stage 4 metastatic cancer. In 2011, she was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a brain cancer that few people survive for one year and almost none survive five years. She wrote a book that is both inspirational and broadly insightful about what she believes accounts for her success.

She refused to accept the medical consensus that she would die and should “put her affairs in order.” Her logic was simple: if even a few people survive a stage 4 cancer, she wanted to try as much as possible what might work to give her a chance to be an outlier as a long-term survivor. We invited her to join the MakeUsWell Network and give all of you the opportunity to get to know her better. You may be inspired to buy her book, "the Case For Hope," available on Amazon.com.

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by Mike Critelli

MakeUsWell Network’s founders feared that the single-minded focus on virus containment would cause all other necessary health improvement initiatives to be delayed or abandoned.

Americans have more healthcare, wellness programs, and medications available than ever, and a reasonably good health improvement blueprint on how to improve health. For many life-threatening conditions like cancer, we have the world’s best care. 

But our results are terrible. Our life expectancy has dropped back to 1996 levels. Why?

Americans always underutilize preventive care, fail to manage chronic diseases, and delay treatment for more acute conditions. The pandemic made overall health worse.

Self-insured employers spend significant money for healthcare and wellness programs, but do not realize their intended benefits. Timely usage of available programs is disappointing. 

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