92% of consumers, globally, want to change their diet to be healthier; 8 in 10 global health citizens are actively trying to be healthier. But these health-intentioned people share challenges and frustrations in meeting these well-intentioned goals. Having spent the last month of living and working in 4 cities in Europe, I’ve had the opportunity to experience many dimensions of health and medical care in four European countries. One universal truth in the “I-know-what-I-know” category of evidence-based health is that (good) food bolsters, sustains, and assures health for individuals, families, communities, and nations. I saw evidence of this in conversations and work situations throughout my Euro-month in Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. These experiences and data points have been, serendipitously timing-wise, captured in a report published by Ahold-Delhaize, the food chain which operates grocery stores in Europe and the United States. My personal case study-experience, which I’ve written about here in Health Populi, has been with the small-format urban grocer Proxy (Toison D’Or location) in Brussels located in my old neighborhood of St. Gilles in Brussels, Belgium,. This is where I shopped for groceries earlier this month while in Brussels (and during my time living in Brussels during the COVID and after-pandemic-era). My first entry through the Proxy front door was akin to meeting up with an old trusted friend as I am a dedicated home cook who loves to hunt-and-gather fresh and locally-sourced food.                         To bolster their understanding of consumers, health, and food, Ahold Delhaize collaborated with GlobeScan and the Consumer Goods Forum to conduct consumer research between February and March 2026 in seven national markets in which the company operates supermarkets: Belgium. the Czech Republic, Greece, the Netherlands, Romania, Serbia, and the U.S (oversampling here to reflect the large population and regional differences across the country). The results of this study were published this month in the report, Collaborating for a healthier future: retail’s role in a healthier food system. Ahold Delhaize served up the implications and key themes emerging from the research: Closing the intention-action gap on healthier eating, especially the opportunity to create environments that support healthy choices Layering solutions which combine interventions that together maximize impact Scaling what works through collaboration by implementing multiple approaches driving changed at-scale Considering products, meals, and lifestyles to support healthier eating patterns through everyday habits and routines, and, Dealing with the role of AI in healthier diets, exploring the potential for trusted, personalized nutrition support.               The research found that consumers, globally, face three key challenges when it comes to healthier eating: the affordability issue, where healthier food options compete with other household spending costs; facing complicated decisions about healthier food where consumers questions about the information on nutrition and food-for-health; and, a lack of personalization when considering healthier food options – not fitting, “the way I eat, drink and live,” in the words of the study.                 How to address these challenges? Ahold Delhaize recommends closing the gap between consumers’ healthier intentions versus making the healthier choices by making the decisions evidence-based via, Affordability. Ease in decision making, and Making offerings more relevant and personalized to peoples’ lifestyle and values.                     There is a solid ROI for food retailers who endeavor to close the gaps between consumer intent and purchase of healthier foods: the bar chart details options retailers could implement to attract consumers’ greater engagement in healthier food spending: most impactful, globally, would be making healthier options more affordable, offering a greater array of fresh fruit and veg, suggesting healthy meals making up recipe ingredients in “one-click,” and making it easy to search and filter online by health and dietary needs — both a personalization and ease/convenience tactic.       Health Populi’s Hot Points:  Ahold Delhaize’s call-to-action emphasizes keeping the consumer at the center of all the company does….”embedding healthier choices into the rhythms of everyday life….”                 Such a focus on health, of the individual, for the community, and for national markets, requires collaboration: making health is a team sport. Check out the company’s concluding recommendations on how to design healthier choices through a pragmatic lens of “what works.” The collabs for this audacious (and laudable!) goal address roles across the health/care stakeholder ecosystem, including food manufacturers, policymakers, health experts (it’s the evidence-base that counts), farmers’ cooperation, consumers themselves for self-care focusing on healthier habits — and a civil society. As consumers around the world gain more sense of self-agency for acting on their health and well-being — many taking on greater out-of-pocket costs for medical care. insurance, and prescription drugs — health care looks increasingly “retail,” and so the retail health ecosystem has the opportunity to meet people and their personal “rhythms” to partner in co-making health and well-being with individuals, communities, and indeed the public’s health. This report and the research informing it represents the best current view of how large grocery chains and commercial food channels can be relevant and impactful on helping build a healthier world, one health citizen at a time, at scale. The post Food As the Universal Prescription for Health with the Grocer in the Health/Care Ecosystem – Learning from Ahold Delhaize appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

“La salute per tutti, tutto per la salute.”            That’s “Health for everyone, everyone for health.” It took me to get to Italy to find my longtime mantra for work and life expressed by a European pharmacy chain, the Dr. Max Group. I’m in Florence, Italy this week, celebrating my husband’s and my 40th wedding anniversary – feeling blessed and well in all forms, mind, body, and spirit. So it’s a propitious moment to meet the Dr. Max pharmacy company, which is fast-growing in Italy beyond its roots in eastern Europe. Currently, the organization’s pharmacies span 18 countries. And while I’m here in Florence, I found a Dr. Max pharmacy 3 km from where we are in the Oltrarno. The vibe of the pharmacy-retail store experience is a convergence of a U.S. consumer’s Ulta-meets-CVS pharmacy-meets-Capital One Cafe. My timing is serendipitous becausethe company is implementing a program called Forever20 which is bringing health-and-longevity-on-wheels to health citizens throughout Italy. The effort runs from September 2 to October 6, 2026.                   “The campaign aims to promote a healthy and active lifestyle through an ecosystem of initiatives dedicated to prevention , wellness , and exercise,” Dr. Max’s press release explains (in the English translation from Italian). “The project aims to maintain a high level of awareness on the topic of prevention, making it accessible to all, with the idea that this includes behaviors, check-ups, and monitoring activities that help identify the main risk factors early and promote more informed choices. The campaign focuses on holistic well-being, promoting paths to regaining balance and quality of life.” The mobile health services address a range of conditions and prevention, including cardiovascular health (think ECG, Holter monitors, blood pressure), along with longevity and aging assessments, and exercise/activity promotion where consumers can participate in daily challenges via Health Walks.                    “Making prevention accessible means bringing it ever closer to people, in the places and moments of their everyday lives,” Dr. Max’s Chief Marketing & Customer Officer Francesco Ghibaudo, said about Forever20. That sounds a lot like, “health happens where we live, work, play, pray, and learn,” the adage often used by U.S. public health advocates (like me). As I’ve discussed in my books HealthConsuming and Health Citizenship, health care in our time is increasingly morphing into “retail health,” with health citizens taking on greater self-care and agency for their own health. So it is with Forever20 and Dr. Max’s overall mission: “By bringing informational activities and engagement opportunities to the local community, the chain underscores its commitment to making prevention increasingly accessible, moving it beyond traditional healthcare settings and integrating it into everyday life…Today, the pharmacy is much more than a place to find a product or receive a solution to an immediate health need. It is a local health facility that supports people in their daily self-care, becoming an increasingly important point of reference not only for health, but also for well-being and prevention. We believe that the future of the pharmacy is to be a place where citizens can find a listening ear, qualified advice, services, and concrete tools to take care of their health in an informed and continuous manner….capable of promoting healthy lifestyles and spreading a culture of prevention accessible to all.” Health Populi’s Hot Points:  In pondering this post, I’m reminded of a prototypical quote from America’s early days, “Go West, Young Man.” Well, I’ve looked (and traveled) eastward, and I’ve found a True North in the ethos of the Dr. Max group. It is wonderful to see self-care and consumers’ health engagement for wellness and longevity growing around the world….individual health bolsters community health, and at scale public health globally. The messages of respect, partnership between pharmacist and health citizen, and education are universal, and the Dr. Max organization and the company’s staff exemplify this. Stay tuned to Health Populi over the next few weeks as I share more health-findings and -learnings from Amsterdam, Brussels, and London….   The post Health for Everyone, Everyone for Health – Meeting Dr. Max Pharmacy in Italy appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

Consumers have placed their personal physicians above all health care touchpoints in their lives when it comes to trust stewards of and for health care information and data protection. More consumers have adopted the use of AI in every day life across many life flows, including their health care. The latest riff from the annual Edelman Trust Barometer 2026 highlights a look into health and trust in concert with the Yale School of Public Health. And they found that among AI users, one-half think AI can address their health concerns at least as well as doctors can.             To gain global health citizens’ perspectives on trust, health, and AI, the Edelman team polled 12,998 adults in 13 countries between late February and mid-March 2026. Countries covered included Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, S. Africa, S. Korea, the UK and the United States. The first chart reveals that 1-in-2 AI users’ views on using the technology for health concerns in general. However, more granularly, consumers believe AI can handle particular tasks at least as well as a doctor such as 19% who cite triage care (that is, to assess whether and when they need to seek further medical advice), 19% to perform basic medical procedures or determine proper treatment or medication, and 16% to diagnose an illness or condition. The younger the population, the more likely health citizens are to feel AI can accomplish these health tasks at least as well as a doctor — believed by 59% of those 18 to 34 years of age compared with only 35% of people 55 and over. Formal education also makes a difference in this perspective, with 56% of those with at least a university education believing AI for health concerns can be at least as good as a physician compared with 42% of those with less than a university education.             Looking more deeply into the categories consumers deal with for their personal health decisions, the data also revealed that people more highly value their health care provider’s (HCP’s) source of truth for diagnoses, long-term treatments, and disease prevention than for diet and nutrition, and wellness and longevity. For these latter two areas of health decisions, global health citizens more favorably see uncredentialed sources compared with licensed physicians. Those uncredentialed sources include artificial intelligence (AI), creators without medical training (think: Tik-Top influencers without an MD or RN after their name), family and friends, people they know who have similar health conditions (such as Susannah Fox’s community of peer-to-peer health care), and spiritual leaders.             Health Populi’s Hot Points:  People are turning to AI in health care for a range of reasons: in the work I do at the intersection of consumers, technology, home economics, and health, more folks are likely to adopt AI for values of convenience, immediacy, attention, agency, access, and costs — which can be time costs, medical bill costs, and psychological stressors of disease taboos (say, for mental health, sextually transmitted diseases, gender, among others). Some of the Edelman data in this round of reporting and analysis points to the consumer’s perception of whether the information source — focusing on the physician here — showing they are “listening actively” and “understanding my situation.” Over one-half of the global health citizens Edelman polled said that if a medical expert or HCP wanted me to follow a recommendation about which I had doubts, it would be important for them to, Listen first to make sure they understand me and my life situation; Welcome my doubts and address them patiently and without judgment; and, Acknowledge, validate, and help me work through my concerns.           In my work teaching health care corporate executives and client teams on engaging with patients, caregivers, and retail health consumers, I’ve been citing this slide from a recent Qualtrics report on the omnichannel customer experience. I love this statement because it reflects what the 2026 Edelman Trust data reveals in the previous graphic: that “omnichannel = being understood” in the customer journey. In this case, the customer is the patient who yearns to be heard, valued, and understood. As we all continue in our journeys adopting and using AI for work and living our lives, we are the humans in this loop who need to stay engaged — and to demand relevance and empathy from those with whom we interact for our full lives — at work, in our communities, in our families, and to be sure, in our health care. The post One in Two Americans Who Have Used AI Believe They Can Address Health Concerns At Least As Well As Health Care Providers – The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer Look at AI, Health Care, and Trust appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

Bloomberg, Deloitte, Disney, Starbucks, and Zoom all announced plans to cut health care benefits looking toward 2027 business plans.               Whether this is a blip in the 80+ year old story of the unique employer-sponsored health care market in America or the beginning of a long end-game for U.S. health insurance at the workplace remains to be seen. But the forecasts of near-double-digit health premium increases employers will confront in 2027 are potent, forcing companies to, at least, re-visit and alter health benefit designs to surgically target specific cost-increasing categories — such as GLP-1 medicines and behavioral health benefits, along with much-valued coverage such as parental leave and financial advice. Note that for some smaller employers, health benefit cost increases could exceed 14% (more details on that below), a space to watch in terms of benefit cuts and eroding levels of coverage.                 Here is the line chart from the annual Mercer National Survey of Employer Sponsored Health Plans, showing year-on-year cost growth since 2022. Mercer’s rate-of-increase forecast is in the ballpark of other recent projections we’ve been collecting, from Aon (at 9.5%), the Business Group on Health (at 9.2%), the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (at 10%), PwC (at 9%), and Willis Towers Watson (WTW) with an 11.1% estimate for 2027.             The zenith for health premium cost increases was back in 2003, circled here in a chart clipped from Mercer’s previous iteration of the Employer Benefit Survey. Double-digit premium increases were a feature of annual health benefit planning at that time, where pioneering efforts for value-based care began to emerge in benefit plan designs. It’s interesting to see that inflation (CPI) was hovering lower than health benefit cost changes every year, which in 2026-27 helps put in perspective as inflation in the U.S. continues to be sticky upward based on the price of petrol/gasoline, food, and certain categories of goods subject to tariffs.             It’s also important to add context to employer-sponsored health care costs looking at how small businesses are facing even higher growth rates to provide health care to workers. The Peterson-Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) researchers examined the small group market filings for Affordable Care Act-compliant plans in the small group market — defined as companies with 50 or fewer full-time employees, reporting these results out in an August 2026 study. Health plan premium increases in the small employer group market are expected to grow even faster in 2027 compared with larger employers providing health insurance  — with a median rise of 14% and other employers facing even higher cost spikes. This median rate could be even higher for many small companies: of the 295 plans studied, 95 were facing increased rate changes of 15% to 20%, as shown in the bar chart. Health Populi’s Hot Points:  There are many reasons offered by the various employee benefits firms to explain the much-higher cost of increases for health benefits in 2027. Among these, the following fall on a plurality of firms’ lists of prominent cost-drivers (or inflaters): in no particular order, The growing prescribing and use of GLP-1 medicines to deal with diabetes, weight loss and obesity — along with other specialty drugs driving pharmacy expenses up Higher hospital costs, underpinned by consolidation (hospital mergers) in local and regional markets which reduce the level of competition in those communities, allowing institutions to charge higher prices for inpatient and outpatient services Lower public sector reimbursements for public health programs (Medicare, Medicaid, others) which pressure privately provided commercial insurance plans Hospitals and other providers allocating more financing to invest in information technology — namely, AI tools and services to address both financial/administrative workflows along with clinical software. As U.S. families continue to struggle with affordability for kitchen table line items, from mortgages and housing to utilities, the cost of transportation (say, driving to work), and food to feed families, health care costs can crowd out other spending — or, be avoided so consumers can pay for necessities in daily life and living. Watch for employers providing health insurance at the workplace to levy additional out-of-pocket spending onto workers and their families, along with shifting health and other benefits off of the benefits menu. Affordability challenges face U.S. families in record numbers in 2026, and these worker health insurance forecasts bode ill for improving that health care cost line item in families’ budgets for 2027. The post In 2027, Employers Will Face the Highest Health Benefit Cost Increases Since 2003 – Is This the Beginning of Workplace Health Erosion? appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

“Shoppers are feeling less control of their spending on food and more concerned about food prices than in February 2026.” Researchers with The Food Industry Association discussed their latest research into U.S. consumers’ worries about food prices’ impacts on family meals this week, and their findings comport with what I see happening in peoples’ self-care choices at-home directly impacting nutrition as well as adjacent areas of retail health and home health life-flows. This data point meshes with trends in geopolitics, home economics, and consumers’ growing demand for self-care outside of traditional “front doors” compelling me to call-out the health risks accompanying the high and higher costs of food.         Start with geopolitics, which this week prompt me to focus on President Trump’s latest call for tariffs on Canada. Follow this announcement the IFPA immediately warned its stakeholders — the largest international association serving the entire fresh produce and floral supply chain — that, “The implementation of new tariffs on Canadian goods adds to the uncertainty facing the agriculture industry operating across the highly integrated North American market. Last year, Canada accounted for?48 percent of U.S. fresh produce exports, over $3.5 billion in produce sales. In total, the United States and Canada share nearly $6.5 billion in annual fresh produce trade. Canada is also a major supplier of cut florals and floral inputs, as well as an important source of critical inputs that U.S. fruit and vegetable growers rely on. A stable, predictable trade relationship with Canada is essential to the growers, businesses, and consumers who depend on a strong North American fresh produce supply chain.” With consumers’ growing taste for food-as-medicine and mindful food choices for medical goals, a research paper in BMC Public Health struck me this week bolstering my thinking of food as a social determinant of health (or driver of health). Titled, “Beyond proximity: how food quality in dollar and grocery stores influences health,” the researchers found that folks who buy food from dollar stores were at greater risk of poorer health outcomes.             In UC Riverside’s coverage on the university researchers’ study, Jules Bernstein wrote, “While consumers may save a few bucks on groceries at dollar stores, they end up paying a higher price with their health. New UC Riverside research shows a link between dollar store food quality and higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes.” The graphic summarizes the study results. Ryan Bruellman, UCR genetics, genomics, and bioinformatics doctoral candidate and the study’s first author, explained his motivation to do this study: ““I want to raise awareness that higher grocery costs are pushing people to buy highly processed, lower quality food at dollar stores, and it is negatively impacting their health in a similar way to fast food.” Ryan and his colleagues used data from the Centers for Disease Control’s 500 Cities Project which has gathered data across U.S. communities. They included a cohort of dollar stores including the 99 Cent Store, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar which together represent about 34,000 storefronts. Furthermore, Ryan noted that, “Across the U.S. there are more dollar stores than traditional grocery stores.” While this hypothesis might be intuitive to a lot of people, having this hard data is important and should inform public policy from the Federal level to local public school departments.           Here’s the USDA’s latest data on rising food prices by product category at the grocery store and away from home in restaurants. The price of food increased by 3 percentage points from June 2025 to June 2026, with higher inflation for beef and veal (11.8%), fresh fish and seafood (6.3%), and certain kinds of fresh produce (for example, fresh vegetables rising at nearly 10%).           Now to the FMI research I cited introducing this post: consider how U.S. adults have reacted to the rising cost of food and their control over expenditures.                 ‘   FMI’s webinar on Consumer Perspectives on Family Meals, precedes FMI’s Family Meals mission convening Family Meals Month in September.  Note the mission spelled out: that “Family meals are the foundation for a healthy nation…The nourishment we get at family meals helps us to be physically and emotionally fit.” Bottom line? “Stay strong with family meals!” FMI enthuses on the poster asking us to Join the Movement. [FYI, I grew up this way as busy as a family we were in my Wonder Bread years, and this stuck with me in our raising our own daughter decades later.] Importantly, FMI’s data and recorded personal responses recorded for their session provides life human commentary on this topic: that families seek togetherness over the meal table but struggle with the cost of food, the cost of transportation, and the cost of time to/from workplaces.                Health Populi’s Hot Points:  PwC’s Voice of the Consumer study this year (subtitled “the rise of everyday health”) discussed the food and beverage industry’s role in serving up healthy choices for mainstream people who are dealing with the high costs of health care and the high costs of healthy food. In this diagram from the PwC report, we can learn about opportunities for the Food+Bev industry, illustrating areas consumers demand products and services from these stakeholders — including meal and nutrition support, help with sleep and stress relief, and products that can help us feel and look better, from head to toe and from internal cells to external skin. Keep keeping in mind FMI’s finding that people are seeking more control in the midst of rising costs: this ethos impacts consumers across all age groups (in different ways), income and education levels, across political party ID, and race and ethnicity identities. When we in the health/care ecosystem talk about and venture to “meet people where they are,” this phenomenon of self-control and agency vis-a-vis rising costs of living is now part of where people are, every single day. The post When the Cost of Food is a Health Risk: Dollar Stores, Tariffs, Family Meals, and the Rising Cost of Food appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

The forecasts for wearable tech for health range from a state of “war” innovators to a consumer-led bull market for quantifying selves across a range of measures. There is a growing array of options for health-driven consumers across a spectrum of goals and applications, and varying levels of clinical evidence. In this post, I’ll discuss the current (fast-moving and -morphing) state of the wearable tech-health market, following up with implications for consumers, caregivers, and health citiznes-at-large.           Let’s start with the forecast from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which held a webinar on their latest annual outlook on consumer-facing devices and tech services. I selected these key data points to share from CTA’s one-year forecast report, the CTA U.S. Consumer Technology One-Year Industry Forecast, 2022-2027 published in July 2026.    FYI I provided input into this forecast based on my work in the digital health, smart rings and things, smart homes, and wearable technology segments. As Savannah Littlejohn of CTA mentioned in discussing the forecast for the digital health segment, AI is adding value to consumers’ perceptions of and utility for these innovations  (say, remote health monitoring) and wearable tech, bolstering sales optimism. In fact, Digital Health as a CTA category of analysis is among the few areas that expect double-digit growth, with the curve of that growth shown on the graph on the left. The report notes that, “AI investments and innovations continue to grow in digital health technology, allowing for greater personalization and data analysis for users.” There are other bright spots of growth in the CTA forecast relating to consumer-driven health and wellbeing, such as fitness activity bands (e.g., Garmin, Google, and Whoop among them) and smart rings which I’ve noted in the past here on Health Populi are finding relatively strong consumer adoption as a category for folks who still like wearing traditional wrist-worn watches as well as people (like me) doubling up on both a smartwatch and a smart ring for different health applications and goals. Gil Levitan of CTA also noted that some consumers are keen to use smart rings to track and manage sleep, a big objective for many consumers (globally) in and beyond 2026-7. Connected health devices are going beyond glucose monitoring, again a growing category among consumers managing diabetes as well as those seeing greater understanding of metabolic function. Adding to the insights gleaned through the CTA research, I note a plethora of mainstream and trade publications taking deep dives in the wearable and digital health market in just the past few weeks. Here, I’ll point to writings in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, along with an informative piece in ATN (Athletech News).             “The Cutthroat Wearables Battle Is About More Than Tracking Your Fitness,” Brent Crane wrote in the Deal Book newsletter of The New York Times August 15th, calling out Google, Apple, Samsung, and newer entrants like Oura “racing” to integrate data from wearable tech into the health care system. As you can read in this sidebar from Brent’s fantastic assessment, his forecast goes into the future to 2035, imagining we are armed and embedded with sensors generating data that feeds into an AI-powered system. This is the sort of personalization that the CTA forecast talked about. While Brent recognizes that, “Full-on health care integration is still in utero,” he also smartly notes that, “Health care is where the real money lies.” Thus the title of this excellent analysis cites “the cutthroat wearables battle,” with companies innovating and positioning to meet the increasingly integrating health care data ecosystem….again, underpinned and accelerated through smart use of AI.                   Moving from “healthmaxxing,” we move to “datamaxxing:” similarly in the Wall Street Journal on August 11, Tina Li and Natalie Kaufman discuss “The Datamaxxers Feeding Their Every Health Move to AI,” discussing the consumer-driven side of the digital health-wearable marketspace. Meet Mika Reyes, whom Tina and Natalie introduce us to, featured in their column. Mika is a “datamaxxer,” preparing to run and optimize performance through gathering personal data from several devices, including a Garmin watch, an Oura ring, and the popular Strava app. The authors write that, “Health obsessives often monitor workouts, step counts, sleep metrics, heart rates and nutrition data, cross-referencing the information with their calendars, meeting transcriptions, emails and clinical records. Now, they are supercharging their habits with AI systems that serve as hyperpersonalized health trainers and assistants. While fretting over such minutiae is far from mainstream practice—many doctors recommend simplicity in fitness and nutrition—a growing number of so-called datamaxxers have finally found their version of nerd Valhalla.”               Health Populi’s Hot Points:  I’ve been part of the digital health community since the advent of the Internet in health care, as my career has tracked the evolution pretty much from the start. I’ll amend Tina and Natalie’s observation on datamaxxers finding “nerd Valhalla” by my own observation and work that these trends are mainstreaming to Main Street, not just to Quantified-Self-Land. The CTA data and annual CES show in Las Vegas, which I’ve attended for nearly 20 years, has demonstrated growing square feet in exhibition halls there and content driving out past the Digital Health Summit onto main stages throughout the event — crossing over into media, gaming, kitchen technology, and last year a growing scene on equity (here on Health Populi translating to “health equity”). Adding in the market analysis published in ATN, I liked this take and table from Courtney Rehfeldt on the market situation, “Fitness & Wellness Startups Have Raised $3.6B This Year – but Not Everyone’s a Winner.” Here are examples of companies in the digital health, connected health, and wearable tech for health space funded in the first half of 2026. You don’t know many of these names yet, but eventually some will show up on the shelves of Target and Walmart’s fitness areas along with Amazon’s expanding marketplace for digital health. What’s driving consumers’ adoption of these technologies are growing senses of financial stress at home across all spending — including health care and medical bills competing with kitchen table issues of food (security and access), energy (at home utilities and running an auto), and housing. In the deepest COVID-era, more consumers repurposes home and hearth into health hubs, people added fitness spaces to their homes, and more added Internet-of-Things for health devices at home — again, “things” featured at CES and other health conferences. While the supply-side of this may be cutthroat, consumers’ growing demand and taste for self-care and control will continue to accelerate across ages and stages of life — for those people who have access to discretionary income. I’ll watch this space for new models of access from vendors and health systems who could bundle tech and services as part of holistic health plans either direct-to-patient and -consumer or through employers and health plan sponsors. Postscript, 19 August 5 pm ET – Check out Leonard Rinser’s just-in-time write-up on his LinkedIn channel about Google’s evolving approach to integrating personal health data, built on the Fitbit chassis. The post A Bullish Market for Wearables and the Health-Driven Consumer appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

A new study in Circulation, published 10 August 2026 found that home delivery of healthy groceries significantly improved blood sugar levels for people dealing with Type 2 diabetes. Now an alliance between the major grocery chain Kroger working with Instacart can scale such an effort for consumers embracing their own approaches to food-as-medicine, combining the delivery of groceries with prescriptions by enrolling in Kroger’s My Prescriptions and Online Pay apps.                 Kroger operates some 2,800 grocery stores serving 11 million people a day. The banners of Kroger include at least one name you would know, such as Baker’s, City Market, Dillons, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, Gerbes, Harris Teeter, Jay C., King Soopers, Mariano’s, Metro Market, Owen’s, Pay Less, Pick ‘n Save. QFC, Ralphs. Smith’s, and the mothership-moniker “Kroger” itself. Kroger launched Kroger Health in 2017 when the grocery giant integrated the fast-growing retail pharmacy operation with existing in-store clinics (under The Minute Clinic branding) along with its staff of registered dietitians. The food chain has been very visible in its mission to bolster Food-as-Medicine, which I’ve often written about here in Health Populi such as in this post exploring Kroger’s growing role in the expanding retail health ecosystem.         With Instacart, Kroger further consolidates its leadership position among competing grocers under the food-as-medicine umbrella, which grew like topsy during the COVID-19 pandemic when grocery stores became trusted touchpoints among health consumers for safe places to source food, consult with retail pharmacists, and find social health while queueing up with other consumers, masked and distanced. Here’s a short video from one of Kroger’s retail store markets discussing the Instacart tie-in.             Health Populi’s Hot Points:  Instacart’s overall corporate messaging bundles grocery delivery with social health: that is, “sharing love through food” by enabling people to enjoy the food and more time to enjoy it together. Some of that love has to do with convenience and service-design, too — as the 2026 IFIC Food & Health Survey found that convenience surpassed healthfulness as a top purchase driver for food & bev. The pharmacy-and-food connection continues to merge as a powerful force in health consumers’ minds for their own health and the health of their families and communities. You can find examples of this among major grocery chains beyond Kroger, calling out Giant, Hy-Vee, Stop & Shop, Wakefern, and Walmart among them.             PwC’s Voice of the Consumer study for 2026 featured food throughout the report on the consumer study, noting that, “Food and beverage companies are already in the health occasions market….As claims become more specific, the proposition can lean away from products and towards services. Products can be wrapped in data, guidance, subscriptions, and personalised prompts to help consumers achieve health outcomes in a convenient and budget-friendly way.”  Leveraging AI and data generated from consumers’ wearable devices, from smartwatches and rings to glucose monitors and smart patches, is moving us closer toward precision nutrition that can scale across food and pharmacy deserts. The post How Kroger and Instacart Are Delivering Food as Medicine, and Medicine with Food appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

A  65-year-old retiring in 2026 can expect to spend an average of $185,500 on health care and medical expenses throughout retirement, we learn in Fidelity Investment’s 25th Annual Retiree Health Care Cost Estimate report published in July.               I’ve reviewed this study annually  since 2011, creating this graph starting that year and adding to it with each annual report’s updated data. Nearly all years, we see the retirees’ healthcare costs increase, with a couple of declines — between 2012 and 2013, and again from 2022 to 2023. This year, from 2025 to 2026, we can see a spiking upward that amounts to a 7.5% increase, one of the highest growth rates since Fidelity began exploring retiree health care costs.               What is included in the top-line big number: Original Medicare, Parts A and B, along with Medicare Part D — covering premiums, copayments, and other out-of-pocket costs for medical care and prescription drugs through retirement. Note that these annual macro numbers do not include Long-Term Care expenses. In 2926, these three components added up to, Medicare Parts B and D premiums = 45% Other medical expenses {copayments, coinsurances, deductibles, etc.) = 48% Out-of-pocket prescription drug expenses = 7%. Fidelity’s survey of U.S. working adults has found that over one-half of pre-retirees incorrectly assumes that Medicare will cover all of peoples health care expenses through retirement until death. The head of Fidelity Health, Steve Betts, commented on this year’s report: “Medicare is a critical part of retirement health coverage, but it does not eliminate every health care expense. This estimate helps illustrate why both pre-retirees and retirees alike will benefit from carefully considering out-of-pocket expenses and how they will pay for them as they build out their retirement income strategy.” Here’s a link to my Health Populi post on this study from 2024, when retiree health care costs for a single was $165,000 and for a couple, $330K. Health Populi’s Hot Points:  The issue of health care affordability is on every U.S. adult’s mind in mid-2026, as medical bills compete on the kitchen table and patient’s wallet with other expenses in the family budget: food and groceries, gas prices at the pump, utility bills, rent and mortgage, and other household goods hit hard by tariffs, from consumer electronics like laptops (as we approach school-buying season) and washing machines with computer chips making home appliances smarter.             News that both the Medicare and Social Security Trust funds would hit a point of insolvency by 2033 may not be in the front-of-brain radar of American workers, whether Gen Z and Millennial, or closer to retirement — but these programs are part of Americans’ assumptions as they age toward joining AARP when turning 50, and thereafter counting down 5, 10, and 15 years toward retirement age. These programs, into which Americans have saved through their working lives, represent pots of cash that may look like attractive sources of funding for certain government programs in the “Guns” segment of the “Guns versus Butter” resource allocation discussions on Capitol Hill. The seven intervening years between “now” and 2033 will fly by without a check on balancing peoples’ savings into these programs with other spending priorities divined by the White House, the President’s cabinet members, and the Legislative Branch. My strong recommendation for anyone in the health/care and caring economy ecosystem is to stay engaged with this information and the discussions about “transforming” Medicare and Social Security. These are not programs of entitlement: they have been earned and paid-into by workers who have funded them paycheck by paycheck. The post The Cost of Healthcare for Retirees in America Hit $185,500 for a Person Retiring in 2026 – Welcome to Fidelity Investment’s 25th Annual Report appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

AI adoption is scaling faster than trust, where trust is tied to concerns about data privacy, transparency, and control in the U.S., Canada, and the UK. Welcome to the AI Atlas, what The Harris Poll calls “A living map of how people relate to AI and how those relationships evolve.” I consumed the Atlas with my lens on healthcare and self-care firmly in context, and in the Hot Points below, distill some thoughts on Harris’s fascinating market segmentation of AI/consumers.                 To construct the Atlas, The Harris Poll conducted a survey online in January 2026, assessing some 16,017 adults aged 18 and over in Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, the U.K., and the U.S. Harris explored three pillars of consumers’ AI behaviors to build the market segments: Daily rhythm, exploring how AI “shows up” in daily behavior Ethical command, how people evaluated, trust, and manage AI, and, AI identity, considering how AI connects to capability, authenticity, and self-perception.               Based on this methodology and survey research, The Harris Poll divined six distinct groups of people who share a pattern of behavior, trust, and identity. The segments are shown in the graphic, including: AI Maximizers Advanced Integrators Everyday Users Selective Adapters Skeptical Resisters, and, Disengaged Non-Users. I’ll focus on #1 and #5 here in Health Populi, the AI Maximizers and Skeptical Resisters, and hope you’ll visit the full report to gain insights into all six AI-personae.                           Let’s start with the most intense, leading-edge users of AI: the AI Maximizers. For these consumers, Harris explains, AI is not just a tool but core part of how people operate and define themselves. They are the most familiar with AI tools, and their use of AI spans the personal, professional, and creative. They use AI to find information, to write, to plan tasks, to learn and build skills — and 72% of these Maximizers use AI for health and wellness guidance. This group comprises about 1 in 5 people in the U.S., more men than women, and over one-half of Millennials globally. The next-most intensive users of AI in Harris’s segmentation are the Advanced Integrators — with a key differentiating factor of using AI for efficiency and completing tasks compared with the Maximizers who have a more exploratory approach to AI.                         I wanted to explore this AI-using consumer segment as health consumers because many health citizens who are Skeptical Resisters could benefit from aspects of AI-delivered health information and services — but their resistance to the technology would be a barrier to realizing potential benefits of the AI + health convergence. The Skeptical Resisters know about AI but are resistant, Harris found, due to distrust, discomfort, and perceive risks. These consumers have looked into AI and “largely rejected it,” Harris observed. Only 38% use AI tools to find information at least weekly, and only 11% use AI for writing, 10% for work — well below global norms for regular users. On the upside for opportunity and health services planning, 31% of Skeptical Resisters would be interested in using AI for health and wellness guidance.             Health Populi’s Hot Points:  Of the three pillars making up the AI Atlas Index underlying the six consumer segments, it is the second factor of Ethical Command that informs peoples’ behaviors in evaluating, trusting, and controlling AI tools. It is clear across the segments in Harris’s survey data that between one-fourth and one-third of consumers, globally and generally, would be interested in adopting AI tools for health and wellness guidance. Harris points out in assessing the major these coming out of this research that the biggest growth opportunity is in deepening use of AI with the “middle market” of “moderately engaged, curious consumers.” AI use for health and well-being isn’t broad or habitual in the mainstream yet, but Harris suggests that, “growth is likely to come from converting their (that is, peoples’) situational use into repeat, expanded use.” This is where health consumers’ trusted touchpoints for their healthcare and service delivery can make a profound impact on peoples’ initial trial of the technology and subsequent adoption and habitual use — the way the top two segments in this study have come to use AI in daily life for tasks, insights, and life-flows. Health citizens, particularly those in the U.S., are currently confronted with medical bills and lack of transparency for health care costs in the midst of a persistent inflationary economy where affordability can also compromise trust when it comes to filling a prescription, schedule a necessary medical test or procedure, or finding an on-ramp to primary care. These examples of barriers to getting care can often be enabled through various AI tools, whether chatbots served up by health plans or providers, prescription drug information delivering personalized pricing for copays or discount cards, or telehealth/virtual visits enabled through AI-built on-ramps to care — say, for behavioral or mental health visits (where trust is an enabler to seeking and getting needed services) or symptoms of a daunting infectious disease. The Harris Poll gives us insights into six consumer personae that can help us tailor AI-enabled services that can be built with trust- and privacy-by-design. For healthcare, these principles will be key to boosting AI adoption for health consumers’ self-care and sense of agency about their and their loved ones’ health. The post How to Segment AI-Using Consumers: The Harris Poll AI Atlas, and What It Means for Healthcare appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

Two in three U.S. adults believe that recent high inflation has negatively impacted their ability to pay for food, clothing, or housing in the past twelve months — and, due to inflation in the U.S., 42% of people said that they have skipped or delayed medical care in the past year — including 52% of folks not yet enrolled in Medicare, and 27% of Medicare enrollees. Such are the economic lives of American households as quantified in the eHealth Mid-Year Healthcare Pulse Report 2026, published in July 2026.             eHealth surveyed over 1,000 Americans to assess their perspectives on the burden of medical costs for both pre-Medicare enrollees and Medicare beneficiaries.  Current with the Zeitgeist of health care in mid-2026, the study also looked into health consumers’ views on GLP-1 medicines for weight loss and their costs.             For younger adults not yet eligible for Medicare, 4 in 5 are worried about healthcare costs in today’s world — with 3 in 5 “very worried” about healthcare costs. Looking ahead to retirement, the majority of people worry about healthcare costs — and one-half underestimate what their medical spending in retirement will be.             Forecasting their future in retirement for Social Security and Medicare coverage, 3 in 4 Americans foresee those benefits will not be available to them. Among current Medicare beneficiaries, 75% are worried that this health insurance program into which they paid over their lives as working Americans will be reduced in their times of need.           Health Populi’s Hot Points: “Are Health Care Costs THE Top Issue for Voters?” Drew Altman, CEO of Kaiser Family Foundation, asks and answers in a KFF essay on 20 July 2026. In KFF’s Health Tracking Poll conducted in late June 2026, nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults said they were somewhat or very worried about healthcare costs, a percentage of folks slightly above those worried about gas and other transport costs. Fifty-three percent of people were worried about affording food and groceries, and one-half of U.S. adults were worried about their rent or mortgage expenses. Altman points to similar polls looking into health citizens’ and voters’ views on health care costs in 2026, finding similar responses in a study from Gallup (finding 61% of U.S. adults worried “a great deal” about health care affordability). As Altman explains, “Both worries about unexpected health care costs and problems paying health care bills are motivating voter concern about health care….Voters clump health costs with a series of other problems and worries about their family budgets. I have come to the conclusion that the search for a single top issue through polling questions—whether it’s health costs, or gas prices, or the cost of food—is artificial. People worry about and experience these costs together. There is no top issue, unless that issue is the catchall, ‘cost of living.'”                 The point here in Health Populi since the start of the blog in September 2007 is that health care costs have been embedded in Americans’ household costs of living for a long, long time. We’re just feeling the fiscal health bill stress more acutely in 2026. And those people stretching muscles as health citizens are increasingly motivated to feel a sense of self-agency and health consumerism as they pay more, feel the pain, and head to the voting polls. The post Americans’ Spending on Healthcare, Food, and Housing: It’s All the Costs of Living – eHealth’s 2026 Mid-Year Survey appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.