Quality of life and sense of well-being add up to more than general health. According to 2010 Arizona Health Survey data, 13 percent of adults (N=7,983) reported having three to six chronic diseases. Of these, slightly over half reported their general health as good, very good or excellent. By comparison, close to 75 percent reported [...]

Is not a bad thing and can even be good for us, according to an emerging body of research. Even the most socially motivated people need to regularly take time for themselves if they want to have well-developed personalities and replenish their capacity for focus and creative thinking. One Harvard study “indicates that people form [...]

Literally. It’s shaving years off of your life. Those are the American Cancer Society’s and Dr. James Levine’s conclusions after five years of rigorous study. And they’re not alone. An Australian study cited in this article concluded that “for each additional hour of television a person sat and watched per day, the risk of dying [...]

Have only a trivial amount of strawberries from concentrate but contain highly processed ingredients never before present in the food supply, including seven variants of sugar and partially hydrogenated fat, according to a commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This is merely one example of an “ultraprocessed” food product. The amount of [...]

In a recent blog, The Perils of Nice, the CEO of Social Velocity, a management consulting firm, cites a recent study that contrasts how consumers stereotype nonprofit organizations (warm, generous, caring = nice) and for-profits (more competent, but not necessarily socially aware). He concludes that “in order [for nonprofits] to innovate and work toward real [...]

For the New Year, let us resolve to get our personal and collective mojo working. Mojo – the flow of positive energy, creativity and purposeful action – can’t be conjured up by a talisman or voodoo. It depends on the application of principles of good design, which are evident in well-functioning social and ecological systems, [...]

In a recent blog, a professional in a national management consulting firm that works with nonprofits, foundations and other groups waxed positive about attending a recent event and “learning from four really smart and experienced people” about the virtues of “cohort capacity building” – “working toward a shared goal with a group of nonprofits that [...]

A new SLHI report, Adult Substance Use in Arizona 2010, includes some findings using data from the 2010 Arizona Health Survey (AHS) that may seem contrary to popular notions of who is using and possibly abusing alcohol, prescription drugs and illicit drugs. According to the report: People with higher incomes were more likely to begin [...]

According to the Arizona Department of Health Services’ recently published Arizona Health Statistics and Vital Statistics 2009 report, there were 92,616 resident births in 2009 – over 10,000 fewer than the number of births in 2007. Latinos and Hispanics experienced the largest decline, accounting for 7 out of 10 fewer births. Even though fertility rates [...]

A recent study suggests that the earlier people retire, the more quickly their memories decline. Ergo, if you want to stay cognitively sharp, keep working. People in the U.S., England and Denmark, where people tend to retire later, did better on memory tests than people in places like France, Italy and Spain, where they tend [...]