Medicine & Health

This presentation contains a general overview of the internet population, an analysis of African Americans and the internet, and some thoughts about the internet’s impact on health and health care.

A modest backlash in attitudes towards legalized gambling has taken hold among an American public that spends more money on more forms of legal gambling now than at any time in the nation's history.

As more Americans come online, more rely on the internet for important health information. Fully 58% of those who found the internet to be crucial or important during a loved one’s recent health crisis say the single most important source of informat...

At a time when the nation's waistline has expanded to record girth, about two-thirds of American adults are either dieting, exercising or doing both. But by their own reckoning, they don't have much to show for their efforts.

Americans are eating more but enjoying it less. Just 39% of adults say they enjoy eating "a great deal," down from the 48% who said the same in a Gallup survey in 1989.

Americans believe their fellow Americans have gotten fat. They consider this a serious national problem. But when they think about weight, they appear to use different scales for different people.

These edicts represent the collective judgment of the American public when asked to assess the moral dimensions of different kinds of behaviors.

Blogs are part of the bigger story about dramatic change in people's information environments. This presentation on health-related blogs focuses on their implication for health providers in communicating with patients and caregivers.

Overall, about a quarter of all adults in this country say they always feel rushed, while a majority of Americans sometimes feel rushed and about a quarter almost never feel rushed.

Some of us are happier than others, and this variance helps to paint a portrait of the kind of people Americans are. It also casts doubt on some of the famous wisdom on the subject.