What do you get when you combine the tech industry with the health care industry? One answer is “mHealth,” which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines as “the use of mobile and wireless devices to improve health outcomes, healthcare services, and health research.”

Mashable estimates that there are about 40,000 mobile health apps currently available for tablets and smartphones — comprised of a wide range of apps that can help patients access their health records electronically, log exercise time, monitor blood pressure levels, track pregnancies, and check nearby pollen levels, among other things. By some estimates, the number of 2012 downloads for mobile health apps will reach around 247 million by the end of this year, nearly double the figure from last year.

The health care education portal Allied Health World created an infographic to communicate some of the impact that the rise of mHealth has had on health care consumers, including improved access to medical health information and significant savings on health care services for some segments of the U.S. population:

In fact, as a growing number of Americans consumers and businesses capitalize on mHealth, the Food and Drug Administration is paving the way for the safe and practical implementation of mobile technology in the health care sector. Last year, the FDA released guidelines for mobile health apps to help ensure that emerging health technologies are providing consumers with accurate information before they hit the market. The FDA’s website has also now includes an mHealth page under its Medical Devices section, noting that the agency “encourages further development of mobile medical apps that improve health care and provide consumers and health care professionals with valuable health information very quickly.”

A new wave of anti-obesity ads launched this week in Minnesota is gaining new criticism for shaming parents instead of helping to address the nation’s obesity crisis. One of the ads in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota media campaign shows two boys at a fast food restaurant bragging about how much their dads can eat when an overweight man walks up and looks guiltily at his tray of burgers and fries. The other features a mother pushing a grocery cart loaded with junk food while her young daughter mimics her food choices.

Critics are arguing that these ads are unhelpful because they shame people who are overweight or obese, rather than offering them education or support. Lindy West, a blogger at Jezebel who called out the ad campaign, told NPR that the ads are “condescending.” “Fat people know about nutrition. We know that eating four cheeseburgers a day is not the way to go,” she said:

“Fat people hate being fat, because everyone’s mean to you, and you can’t find clothes that fit you, and you can’t fit into the chair at the restaurant,” she says. “We’ve been shaming fat people for decades, and clearly it’s not doing anyone any good.”

The ads were created by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. Marc Manley, the vice president and chief prevention officer, says he was very involved with the creation and messaging behind the ads.

“Our intent in creating these ads was really just to show good parents having moments of realization that they needed to change their own behavior in order to send the right message to their kid,” Manley says.

Manley told the Atlantic that Minnesota needs a stronger campaign to drive home the message in the hopes that parents will have an “aha moment” and change their behaviors to instill better habits in their children.

But researchers at Yale University found that messages that try to shame people into losing weight sometimes backfire because they “instill less motivation to improve health.” Negative messages are more likely to perpetuate stigmas against people who are overweight. As the Los Angeles Times points out, “Heavy workers earn less, are more likely to be passed over for jobs and promotions, and are more likely than their thinner peers to be viewed as lazy and undisciplined, researchers have found.” Instead, the Yale study found that the most effective public health campaigns didn’t even mention obesity and focused on specific ideas to improve health and empower people.

The insurance industry’s manufactured separation of mental health services from more “traditional” medical care in billing codes has long been a source of frustration for health care professionals, creating unnecessary confusion and endangering the health of patients whose illnesses often have both physical and mental components.

But a Colorado-based nonprofit insurance company is striving to change that with a first-of-its-kind integration program aimed at combining the disparate services into a single, coordinated primary care model, as part of a broad effort to shift the U.S. health care industry towards more primary care. Under the pilot program, Rocky Mountain Health Plans will provide so-called “umbrella payments” to three primary care practices to encourage integrated patient care, while giving per-visit fee-for-service reimbursements to three other practices that will serve as control groups for the experiment:

Care could include a traditional office visit with a doctor or a health coach, email exchanges, telephone counseling or a typical counseling session. Patients will get all the care in the familiar setting of their primary care office. [...]

The aim is to prove quickly that patients do better when doctors are paid to keep patients well rather than worrying about seeing as many patients as fast as possible to keep the cash flowing. Rocky Mountain ultimately wants to change the way it pays providers throughout Colorado and spur change around the country.

“This is not an academic exercise,” said Patrick Gordon, director of government programs for Rocky Mountain and executive director the Colorado Beacon Consortium, a coalition of nonprofit health groups that is seeking to boost the quality and efficiency of health care in western Colorado. “This will be a transformative pilot that is being built with the goal of replicating success across the country.”

One of the biggest hurdles to instituting these more efficient, primary care models is adequate financing — that’s why Rocky Mountain will be injecting funds into the Colorado health care system to jump-start reform efforts. “We’re going to take [that hurdle] off the table. Here is the financial support to make this sustainable,” Gordon said.

The stratification of care under the status quo is emblematic of a larger, systemic failure within the health care industry to coordinate care efforts and consequently reduce costs while improving care quality. Rocky Mountain’s mental and physical health service integration program models the way that Obamacare has already encouraged greater coordination between separate elements of the health care industry and an emphasis on primary care.

A new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health points out that — despite the fact that African-American youth drink less alcohol than youths from other racial groups — African-Americans between the ages of 12 and 20 are disproportionately exposed to greater amounts of alcohol advertising. The study’s authors note that black youth tend to consume more media, which contributes to their increased exposure, but research also suggests that alcohol advertising is specifically targeted at African-American teens.

The study notes that there are other factors — particularly religious commitment, ethnic identity, and socioeconomic status — that impact youths’ decision about whether or not to drink alcohol, and marketing campaigns represent just one influencer among many. However, the study’s authors do believe their findings indicate alcohol advertisers have a responsibility to exercise “restraint” in their advertising campaigns now that they know African-American teens may be more susceptible to their marketing materials:

Given higher levels of media usage among African-Americans, alcohol marketers have an obligation to avoid exposure to an at-risk population. In each advertising medium, a small number of brands deliver significantly more advertising exposure to AfricanAmerican youth than to youth in general, sometimes two to four times as much. Specific publications, radio formats, and television channels also expose African-American youth to more alcohol advertising than youth in general, and in some cases, to more alcohol advertising than African-American adults. That certain brands, channels, and formats expose African-American youth to alcohol at a rate double or more than that of all youth suggests that particular attention and action are needed from these advertisers and media.

Researchers reported that although alcohol advertising in magazines declined by nearly 20 percent overall between 2003 and 2008, black youth saw 32 percent more ads for alcohol in magazines than the general American youth population did in 2009. And they were 92 percent more likely to see ads hawking “alcopops” — sweetened alcoholic beverages that alcohol industry watchdogs say are specifically marketed to appeal more to youth. Researchers found this pattern held true for other types of media marketing as well, with African-American youth 17 percent more likely to see alcohol ads on television and 32 percent more likely to hear radio ads for hard liquor.

Despite the correlations that the study draws, it does not claim that advertisers themselves are strategically targeting black youth. “I can’t call it targeting because targeting implies intent and I can’t prove intent,” the study’s author, David Jernigan, told Fair Warning. However, Jernigan is skeptical of alcohol advertisers’ claims that they have no control over whether teens end up seeing marketing materials that are primarily intended for adult eyes. “The industry knows quite precisely what they are doing,” Jernigan said.

Of the least-insured metropolitan areas in the United States, seven of the top ten fall in states where the Governor has refused to accept the expansion of the Medicaid program offered up under Obamacare.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), and Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) have all said expressly that their states will not allow the expansion to take effect — despite the fact that it would offer afforable health care to citizens up to 133 percent of the poverty line who are currently uninsured and who often rely on the emergency room for their only care, racking up costs for taxpayers. But their states have some of the highest level of uninsured people overall, and are host to the least-insured American cities:

The expansion of Medicaid is actually beneficial to the states that implement it. Aside from the obvious benefit of helping more Americans stay healthy, it is projected to save states money by cutting down on the public expenses of unexpected hospital visits by sick uninsured people. And support for the expansion is wide; doctors and hospital officials believe it will hugely benefit them by taking away the burden of sudden urgent care.

The Governor of Nevada, Brian Sandoval (R), has not yet committed to expanding the Medicaid program in his state. California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), on the other hand, has indicated his state will participate in the expansion.