In only one century, we humans have doubled our own lifespan. Not by accident or with fancy hospital equipment. The tools were impossibly simple: Toilets. Garbage pickup. Hand-washing. Workplace safety. Chlorine in drinking water. Condoms. Seat belts. Together, we call those non-medical tools "public health". They create a system of health in our lives and neighborhoods, outside the medical system.
If public health achieved 25 years of life extension with old technology, what is the wired generation capable of? Researchers say we'll be the first to buckle from obesity and die younger than our parents. We say we're the next generation of public health innovators. Developers, designers, storytellers, and entrepreneurs for health.
Ninjas for Health was founded to incubate ideas with the potential modernize proven public health approaches and organize the next generation of revolutionary leaders to deploy them.
It's a critical time. New energy is flooding the workforce as nearly half of health departments employees are eligible to retire. New investments in prevention have fueled thousands of community health projects that are reforming how Americans interface with health. Our ninjas will help scale these efforts by offering innovations that are creative, open-source, and adaptive to community needs.
The health tools we want to use aren't traditional medical scalpels or insurance companies, they're public health 2.0 tools tools that:
- Design compelling stories and stream health information into everyone's living room.
- Code healthy choices to fit in your pocket.
- Network and train the next generation public health revolutionaries.
Sound too simple? Talk to the guy who shoveled poop into the first sewer and changed the world forever.
Americans owe enjoying life at eighty to a list of common-sense (and usually invisible) public health tools that make a monumental difference in each and every one of our lives.
We're ready to add the Internet to that list.
