In their heads, American teens know that leading a healthy lifestyle is important, but does that awareness always translate to a healthy body? According to a study from Scarborough Research, 92 percent percent of teens aged 13-17 say that health and a healthy lifestyle are important and when asked to give themselves a “health report card,” 76 percent of teens gave a grade of B- or higher.
“While this self-awareness of how they rate their healthy living seems to contradict statistics on
child and teen obesity published by the CDC and other …

Melissa Davies
The FDA announced yesterday that it is launching a Transparency Task Force, charged with “making useful and understandable information about FDA activities and decision-making more readily available to the public in a timely manner and in a user-friendly format.” The task force will seek public input on how the FDA can be more transparent, including identifying “new technologies for informing the public.” To this end, there will be a public meeting on June 24, 2009, to solicit recommendations.

The volume of social media buzz surrounding the swine flu or H1N1 virus appears to have peaked mid-last week before trailing off last Friday. However, online conversations surrounding the virus were higher over the weekend as compared to the previous weekend when the story first began breaking.

Interest, however, remains strong on sites like Twitter, where as of this writing, the Centers For Disease Control has added roughly 30K more followers since Friday. Additionally, the use of H1N1 to describe the virus has increased.

Melissa Davies, Nielsen Online
It has been impossible to escape the news about swine flu (or H1N1 virus) this week. One of the most interesting developments this week has been watching the way people are using the Internet, and specifically social media, to connect with one another around this issue. As of yesterday, buzz volume about swine flu in the blogosphere was still on its meteoric climb, far surpassing discussion levels for the peanut butter/salmonella scare that happened earlier this year or, for a different reference point, recent pop singing sensation …

Following Sunday’s spike in conversations surrounding the swine flu outbreak, web chatter doubled on Monday, April 27. Nearly four percent of blogs, micro-blogs such as Twitter, web news and forums were related to “swine flu.” Already, by start of business on Tuesday in the U.S., the number had swelled to nearly six percent.

As reports of the swine flu outbreak reached beyond Mexican borders and into the U.S. late last week, the internet has been buzzing furiously about risks, symptoms, and other updates for information. By comparison, the volume of conversations about the epidemic have already exceeded nearly 10 to 1 those surrounding the salmonella and peanut butter scares from earlier this winter… or, to put it in another cultural perspective, the chatter about swine flu even dwarfs that of recent viral media star Susan Boyle.

The increased conversations around swine flu on Twitter, …