The health care industry has been a bit “late to the game” when it comes to social media. However, this week at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, approximately 100 health care communications professionals came together to explore strategies for catching up.

At an event hosted by Ragan Communications, speakers from Mayo Clinic , Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Operation Smile , Kaiser Permanente and others all came to share their experience jumping into the world. Each of us are exploring the opportunities that social media presents to us as communicators, while at the same time balancing the regulations within a fairly conservative industry. Concerns about protecting patient privacy and overcoming cultures that too often fear transparency were significant challenges for all.

It was great to hear from the organizations who are proactively exploring all that the Web 2.0 world has to offer. And I am glad I was able to share Kaiser Permanente’s journey with my friend and colleague, Dr. Ted Eytan by my side.

As Ted and I have shared here on Disruptive Women before, Kaiser Permanente was shocked into the world of social media. However, in the past couple of years, it has become central to all our public relations efforts. By coupling social media with other outreach strategies, we have built solid relationships with influentials throughout the industry who we often discover are speaking about us, without our involvement.

When we entered the social media space, we did so with the recognition that we had obligation to tell our story. What we didn’t understand at the time was that the more we told our story, the more others would come to understand it and begin to re-tell it for us. While it remains critical that we continue to proactively share our story, we now understand that the voices of those independent third-parties — our members, our employees, other influentials — re-telling it will always be more powerful.

Healthy eating is critical to good health. Yet, we seem to make it exceedingly difficult for the average family to eat a healthy diet.

I recently had the opportunity to watch an advance screening of Food Inc.. There is a vignette in the film that has stuck with me. It follows a Latino family of four struggling to make good and affordable food choices. They discuss how their school and work schedules leave little time to prepare meals at home. They compare the cost of buying dinner at the drive-thru (cheap) to buying produce at the grocery store (expensive). And most memorably, they share that the costs of prescriptions to treat the father’s diabetes severely limit their food budget.

There are no easy solutions to this family’s problems. Nor are their problems unique.

A report released by Prevention Institute and Trust for America’s Health included a similar story of a patient struggling to manage his diabetes. He notes that he works long hours and returned at night to an unsafe neighborhood where the only food sources were convenience and liquor stores. The patient’s doctor concludes that this environment not only contributed to his poor health, but was likely to thwart his efforts to manage it.

The need to support good nutrition has taken on added urgency with our increased understanding of the obesity epidemic and its causes. The facts are clear. Without access to affordable, healthy foods and safe, convenient ways to integrate physical activity into their daily lives, people are more likely to suffer from obesity or one of the related chronic diseases driving the lion’s share of US health care costs: diabetes, asthma, and heart disease.

Research indicates primary prevention that begins in our communities averts the onset of disease. That results in cost savings and alleviation of pressure on our over-burdened health care system. As we, as a nation, examine strategies for reforming health care in the U.S., we also need to closely examine how we can reform our communities to create better health.

Some brilliant people from the public health and nonprofit sectors are working together to address this problem head on. However, private efforts are never enough to create the systemic change we need. Ultimately, we need to change both policies and environments. Forward-thinking health funders formed the Convergence Partnership with shared goal of doing just that.

As the health reform debate unfolds, it will be interesting to see whether our legislators take advantage of the expertise within the Convergence Partnership and embrace this opportunity to fundamentally improve our nation’s health.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing my best to support my own family’s health. We’re looking forward to a summer filled with bike rides to our local farmer’s market.

Nearly 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a summer working with the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues. Of course, I was absolutely thrilled when they asked me to support the introduction of the Women’s Health Equity Act. However, as I began to research the subject to prepare the fact sheets and advocacy materials to support the legislation, that excitement quickly turned to dismay.

As a bright-eyed college intern, I was shocked to learn about the underlying race and gender disparities within clinical trials and health research. I felt that same sense of disappointment when I started examining the race and ethnic disparities that remain in our health care delivery system today.

Kaiser Permanente recently ran a series of advertisements that highlighted the fact that despite the fact that our nation spends $2.5 trillion on health care, we leave more than 47 million uninsured (not to mention the 20+ million who are underinsured). Without the type of universal coverage that every other industrialized nation provides, our nation is forcing millions to forego care and get sicker.

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