Medicaid Expansion Wins In Red State Oklahoma

Bruce Japsen Senior Contributor Jun 30, 2020,11:47pm EDT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Voters in traditionally Republican Oklahoma supported a ballot measure to extend Medicaid benefits to 200,000 low-income adults in a vote testing the popularity of the Affordable Care Act during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The vote by a narrow margin of Oklahomans to expand Medicaid under the ACA is a huge political blow to Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who opposed the ballot initiative and the Donald Trump White House, which just last week took more steps to try to repeal the ACA, the 10-year-old law also known as Obamacare that has expanded health coverage to more than 22 million Americans.

With 100% of precincts reporting, the Medicaid expansion measure known as Question 802 had 50.5% support, which was a lead of more than 6,000 votes out of more than 673,000 cast, according to national media tallies and the Tulsa World.

“In an election year that will be focused on health care, Oklahomans just delivered the first big win,” said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of The Fairness Project, which worked with supporters of Medicaid expansion in Oklahoma and has helped several other states win Medicaid expansion at the ballot box.

“Voters in a deep red state became the first in the country to put Medicaid expansion in their state constitution to protect it,” Schleifer said Tuesday night. “Americans are tired of politicians ignoring the problem or worse, trying to take their health care away. Americans aren’t going to stand for that type of approach anymore.”

The Oklahoma effort to become the 37th state to expand Medicaid is just the latest momentum in Republican-leaning states where lawmakers and governors have historically blocked efforts to expand health insurance coverage to more poor Americans under the ACA in the past. 

The vote to expand Medicaid in Oklahoma to nearly 200,000 people in the state comes as cases of the coronavirus strain Covid-19 surge and some worried that the pandemic and risk of infection hampered turnout in a state that has seen thousands lose their jobs and healthcare coverage. Medicaid expansion is expected to enable more Oklahomans to become eligible for such health coverage as unemployment rises and people lose their employer-based health benefits.

It’s the latest win for The Fairness Project, which has also been working on an August 4 Medicaid expansion ballot initiative in Missouri in hopes it follows the lead of Oklahoma and successful 2018 ballot initiatives in Nebraska, Idaho and Utah. Those states, like Maine in 2017, bypassed Republican governors and legislatures to expand Medicaid by public referendum.

The Fairness Project has said the “Yes on 802” effort would “put Medicaid expansion into the state’s constitution.”

Oklahoma had been one of 14 remaining holdout states that have already missed out on generous federal funding of the Medicaid expansion. From 2014 through 2016, the ACA’s Medicaid expansion population was funded 100% with federal dollars. The federal government still picks up 90% or more of Medicaid expansion. It’s a better deal than before the ACA, when Medicaid programs were funded via a much less generous split between state and federal tax dollars.

“Oklahoma was an inspiring grassroots effort built on a foundation three years in the making,” Schleifer said. “What we started in Maine in 2017 has become a movement across the country. We are proving that Americans are ready to rise above partisan politics and put the health of their communities first. That was true in Oklahoma and we’re witnessing the same thing in Missouri.”

https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2020/06/30/medicaid-expansion-wins-in-red-state-oklahoma/amp/

6 Best Fixes for Pain and Swelling in Your Feet and Ankles

October 7, 2019 

Home remedies to reduce pain and water retention

Have you ever looked down at your ankles and feet, hardly recognizing them as your own because they are so swollen? Whether from long days on your feet, travel or surgery, it happens. For pregnant women, it’s almost inevitable.

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Feet and ankle swelling is uncomfortable, and sometimes it keeps you from moving freely. But there are several ways to relieve swelling from everyday causes — and sometimes you can even prevent it, says Georgeanne Botek, DPM, Head of the Section of Podiatry.

Swelling (or what doctors refer to as edema) happens when your body retains fluid in the lower legs, ankles and feet, she says. It most often occurs on both sides of the body, and it’s not an emergency situation.

“When it comes to swelling, it’s about management and getting through the day,” she says. “There’s nothing that’s necessarily curative.”

How to relieve painful swollen ankles and feet

You can often treat the symptoms of swelling that occurs on both sides of your body yourself, Dr. Botek says. Here are some ideas that can help:

1.      Compression socks. Available at your local drug store, shoe store or online, compression socks provide pain relief and prevent fluid collection in your legs, ankles and feet. They come in light, medium and heavy weights, so be sure you select a pair that isn’t too tight for your body. Dr. Botek suggests starting with lightweight ones that measure between 12-15 mm or 15-20 mm of mercury. Then wear them as long as you can tolerate beginning first thing in the morning.

2.      Elevation. Prop your legs up on an ottoman to help decrease swelling. Various yoga poses, such as lying on the floor with your legs raised and pressed against the wall, can also help.

3.      Exercise. Sitting or standing in one place for too long can increase swelling. Move your knees, and flex and extend your ankles for relief. Consider swimming, as well, because it’s a non-weight-bearing exercise that can also soothe the skin.

4.      Weight loss. Losing weight can reduce swelling and improve your health overall, Dr. Botek says.

5.      Epsom salt. Soak your feet and ankles for 15 to 20 minutes in a cool bath filled with Epsom salt to relieve swelling-associated pain. If you have diabetic neuropathy in your feet, check the water with your hands first to avoid exposing your feet to extreme temperatures.

6.      Magnesium supplements. It’s possible that adding 200 to 400 mg of magnesium to your daily diet can help limit your water retention and pain. Talk to your doctor before taking the supplement, though, as you shouldn’t use it if you have a kidney or heart condition.

For best results, always use more than one therapy at a time, Dr. Botek says. For example, if you walk for exercise, use compression-sock therapy later. If you swim, consider adding yoga to your routine.

Simple changes to reduce or prevent swelling

You can make small changes to your everyday life to help reduce swelling:

·        Take a short walk every hour.

·        Drink eight to 10 glasses of water daily. Drinking less actually promotes swelling.

·        Limit your salt and carbohydrate intake.

·        Put phone books or bricks under the foot of your bed to elevate your legs and feet at night.

Some people looking for relief from this chronic, annoying problem also try essential oils such as peppermint oil, eucalyptus oil and/or lavender or chamomile.

When you should see your doctor

If you develop leg ulcerations or blisters, call your physician. Blisters and sores can set you up for infection, Dr. Botek says.

Also, monitor your feet. Shoes that are too tight due to swelling can often cut into your skin and create wounds.

Most importantly, if swelling only occurs on one side, consult your doctor immediately. You could be at risk for a deep vein thrombosis.

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/6-best-ways-relieve-swollen-feet-ankles-home/

How we're ending Multiple Myeloma

Our intentions are noble – put high-risk multiple myeloma patients at the forefront of our investigation to make their cure a future reality. Our process is groundbreaking – use in-house, industry-quality platforms to ensure that our breakthrough discoveries aren’t left sitting in research labs.

By combining Innovation, Collaboration and Scale, the High-Risk Multiple Myeloma Moon Shot^® is revolutionizing the conventional medical research approach to rapidly adapt pre-clinical findings into treatment options for high-risk multiple myeloma.orts

Overcoming poor prognosis for high-risk patients

Multiple myeloma is the second most common blood cancer and is caused by rogue plasma cells that accumulate in the bone marrow and interfere with the normal production of other blood cells. Patients with this disease can be sorted into risk groups, with high-risk symptomatic disease being characterized by significantly shortened overall survival. While treatment advances have improved clinical outcomes for patients with standard-risk symptomatic disease, high-risk multiple myeloma remains an urgent area with unmet therapeutic needs.

ABOUT MULTIPLE MYELOMA 

High-Risk Multiple Myeloma Moon Shot Leaders

·         Eric Davis, M.D. Associate Professor, Lymphoma/Myeloma

·         Elisabet Manasanch, M.D. Assistant Professor, Lymphoma/Myeloma

·         Robert Orlowski, M.D., Ph.D. Professor, Lymphoma/Myeloma and Experimental Therapeutics

Innovation

Our experts pioneered and validated a new treatment approach, which uses immune cells, called natural killer cells, to increase the effectiveness of stem cell transplantation for treatment of multiple myeloma.

Collaboration

We’re leveraging our internal and external partnerships to ensure that our investigations make a real impact. Our alliances with biotech giants such as Merck, Sanofi and Celgene to ensure our clinical trials run as smoothly and successfully as possible.

Scale

Our cellular therapy approaches are capitalizing on volume. To ensure we’re exploiting the maximum anti-tumor potential of natural killer cells, we’re increasing their numbers in the lab more than 1000 fold prior to treatment.

Help end high-risk multiple myeloma

"Even small donations, when put together, can make a huge difference and be flipped into much larger research efforts to make lives of myeloma patients better."

Listen as Moon Shot^® co-leader Robert Orlowski, M.D., Ph.D., explains how your generous gift can make an impact on High-Risk Multiple Myeloma Moon Shot research projects.

DONATE 

Our Flagship Projects

The High-Risk Multiple Myeloma Moon Shot is focused on preventing and eradicating this disease through two treatment strategies:

1.       Immunotherapy

2.       Cellular therapy

Read more about our projects below.

PREVENTING PROGRESSION THROUGH IMMUNOTHERAPY

For patients in pre- and early-malignant disease stages, such as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and smoldering multiple myeloma, current guidelines recommend monitoring disease progression through watchful waiting. However, intervening earlier in the disease process may improve treatment outcomes for patients that eventually do progress to symptomatic high-risk multiple myeloma. Our Moon Shot experts are focused on improving the identification of patients at high-risk for progression and evaluating the ability for immunotherapy to delay, or prevent, progression in these patients.

LEARN MORE 

ERADICATING DISEASE THROUGH CELLULAR THERAPIES

Despite treatment strategies such as high doses of chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation (SCT), patients with high-risk multiple myeloma often relapse within a year. In collaboration with the Adoptive Cell Therapy Moon Shot platform, our experts are using immune cells with powerful anti-tumor activity, called NK cells, to improve the effectiveness of SCT. Treatment using NK cells both collected from umbilical cord blood and those engineered to better target myeloma cells are being examined for their ability to improve survival outcomes for high-risk multiple myeloma patients undergoing SCT.

LEARN MORE 

STORIES OF HOPE

Grateful patient gives back

Perry Rupp, of Roanoke, Texas, received a successful stem cell transplant at MD Anderson after his multiple myeloma diagnosis. He’s now giving back to the nurses who took care of him — and doing it with an eye on innovation.

Read Perry's story >

RESEARCH UPDATE

Our first-in-human Phase I study examining the ability of natural killer cells to treat multiple myeloma showed promising results. The findings indicated that expanded cord blood-derived natural killer cells, combined with stem cell transplantation and high-dose chemotherapy, had little or none of the side effects seen with current treatments.

Learn more about the clinical study led by Elizabeth J. Shpall, M.D., professor of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy.

https://www.mdanderson.org/cancermoonshots/cancer-types/multiple-myeloma.html?cmpid=linkedin_www_myeloma_moonshots

Web Design: 4 mini marketing case studies about design changes big and small

June 30, 2020 by Daniel Burstein, Senior Director, Content & Marketing, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute

SUMMARY: When you think of web design, your mind might immediately go to the all-encompassing project that is a full-on website redesign. These projects can generate significant results. But they require a large monetary, time, and even political capital investment. So in this article we’ll touch on full redesigns, of course, but we’ll also look at some relatively small changes to a nav, CTA, and reg page that had a big impact. Read on for specific examples from a natural foods CPG, travel website, real estate agent, and nutrition and lifestyle app.

(As seen in the MarketingSherpa newsletter. Click to get a free email subscription to the latest from MarketingSherpa.)

There’s a house across the street from me. It was foreclosed on. Fell into disrepair. Was in a pretty hopeless state. Some investors bought it up six months ago and have been working on it every day since. It went on the market yesterday and — wow — it looks like a new house.

There is another house around the corner from me. It recently got a fresh paint job and a little yard work, and also, it’s like a whole new house.

Your website and apps are no different. Sometimes you need to strip it down to the studs (or depending on how old those technological bones are, just knock the whole thing down) and do a full redesign.

Other times, what you have is mostly good, but identifying that key change or two — planting that metaphorical tree in the front yard and painting the trim — will gain you the performance increase without a massive investment.

In this article, we look at four mini case studies featuring web design changes large and small to spark ideas for improvements on your own sites.

Mini Case Study #1: Natural food consumer packaged goods company increases revenue 18% with website redesign

Marketers are so focused on and passionate about their products, they don’t always have the fresh perspective needed to communicate their product’s value to a new customer through the web.

Take Steve Diebold, for example, the entrepreneur behind Papa Steve’s No Junk Raw Protein Bars. I can attest, he makes some very good protein bars. He’s also a smart and passionate guy I’ve had the opportunity to get to know a little, and there’s much more to these bars than taste. He’s put a lot of thought and work into them.

How do you communicate that on a website? Here was Diebold’s original site.

Creative Sample #1: Original website for natural foods CPG site

You can see, he’s trying to get a lot across right at the beginning of the website.

He was successful in growing his business and felt it was time to take his website to the next level.

Diebold worked with MECLABS Institute Conversion Marketing Services to bring in an outside perspective for the website redesign (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).

The team determined that one of the biggest areas of opportunity for this food products supplier was the expression of the value proposition — there was no differentiation messaging clearly explaining why this bar is superior to other bars.

For example, it was hard to understand the ingredients from a differentiation standpoint on the homepage. A dedicated ingredients page had some good information, but it was not being seen by most visitors and could be improved and leveraged on the homepage.

In addition, taste was a key differentiator compared to competitors but there was little messaging about it.

On the redesigned, optimized website, the team sought to better articulate differentiated value.

The new homepage communicated the superior ingredients in a clear (and shorter) headline that greeted visitors:

“ALL NATURAL, NO JUNK, NON-GMO RAW PROTEIN BARS”

And the subhead communicated the taste:

“That Actually Taste Good!”

Creative Sample #2: Redesigned website for natural foods CPG company

Since the redesign was launched, the overall conversion rate (total orders/total visitors) is up 18%, and overall revenue increased 18% as well. You can read the full case study to see what other changes were made to the site, Website Development: How a small natural foods CPG company increased revenue 18% with a site redesign.

“You can always find a new traffic source, but the sequencing of the story on your website is really critical. If you get that right, you can give people a better experience, and your sales are going to be better, and the business is going to benefit because the customer feels they're benefiting. And if you're truly providing value to customers and they feel that they're getting value, they’re going to keep doing business with you,” Diebold said.

This case study was featured in The 21 Psychological Elements that Power Effective Web Design (Part 1) from MarketingExperiments (MarketingSherpa’s sister publication).

Mini Case Study #2: New navigation design increases on-site engagement 40% for travel company

For most websites, the goal of the homepage should be to get visitors to the part of the website that can best serve them.

When Masai Mara Travel’s IT team noticed significant visitor bounce rates from its homepage, the website’s main entry point, they realized they needed to look at some possible improvements. The company focuses on travel to a national reserve in Kenya.

Its team conducted a short survey of visitors and referenced heat maps of user behavior. “We realized the design of the page, with the navigation menu hidden in a drop-down menu style (also known as a hamburger menu) while very attractive, was confusing to some of our users, especially those in the over 50 years of age bracket — one of our target age demographics for the luxury safari tourist,” said Sanjay Shoor, Operations Director, Masai Mara Travel.

Creative Sample #3: Homepage with hamburger menu for travel website before redesign

After redesigning the homepage with a more noticeable and stand-alone navigation menu bar, the company immediately saw an increase in website clickthrough rates and a 40% increase in on-site engagement rates.

Creative Sample #4: Homepage with new navigation menu for travel website after redesign

“For desktop, we found users were more used to not having a drop-down menu, very possibly because the more mature web user demographic still prefers doing their heavy browsing or online research on large formats, i.e., either tablet or more commonly desktops, especially so when planning their long-haul travel, which can be an involving online process with plenty of switching between different websites to compare offerings,” Shoor said.

For mobile, the space limitation still necessitated use of the hamburger menu. However, the team moved the menu from the right side of the logo to the left side since user-click heat maps indicated the highest eyeball activity on the left side of the screen. “This did improve click rates to secondary pages somewhat,” Shoor said.

Creative Sample #5: Mobile homepage for travel website after redesign

Mini Case Study #3: Adding clear, sticky CTA to real estate website increases conversion from 0.5% to 4.5%

Sometimes the design issue holding a webpage back isn’t what we think of as design at all — the colors, images, layouts, pictures, etc. — it’s that an element is hidden or entirely missing from your page.

After all, marketers shouldn’t just be utilizing design for design’s sake. They should use design to encourage an action.

The team behind the website for Orange County Realtor Kristina Morales wanted to increase the amount of home showing inquiries submitted on the website’s property page.

The overall conversion rate on the property search page was under 0.5%, and a redesign was considered.

Creative Sample #6: Property search page for real estate website

“Before completely redesigning the page, we looked at our analytics and found out that there was nothing wrong with the current design. Visitors were engaged and stayed on the page for a while,” said Oleg Donets, Digital Marketing Strategist, Kristina Morales real estate.

However, the team noticed that the main CTA was easily lost on the page. “Schedule Consultation” was quietly sitting in the upper right.

So instead of completely redesigning the page, the team decided to add a visually noticeable element that stays within the sight of every visitor who lands on the property search page. This is a clearly visible sticky CTA right above all the properties and in a fixed position as visitors scroll up and down.

Creative Sample #7: Sticky CTA for real estate website

The conversion rate increased to 4.5% solely due to the addition of the prominent sticky CTA to the existing website design.

Creative Sample #8: Sticky CTA on property search page for real estate website

“I did not realize that such a small change to my website would have such a big impact on my showing requests,” Kristina Morales said. “Staying on top of website improvements and development are key to sustainable, long-term growth.”

Mini Case Study #4: Better customer understanding leads nutrition and lifestyle app to increase challenge signups

If you’ve read MarketingSherpa for any length of time, you know that the biggest battle most marketers wage is not really with competitors, it’s with our assumptions. One way to test those assumptions when building an app is to prototype the app and get customer feedback that either validates or challenges your thinking.

Habitap was built by a gym with a focus on building a healthy lifestyle by creating nutrition and lifestyle challenges to help people build better habits. The original site had very poor user engagement.

Creative Sample #9: Dashboard in original nutrition and lifestyle app

Topflight Apps worked with the gym to adapt the challenges into a web application that works in any browser (the previous iteration did not display well on mobile). In the process, it also worked to glean insights on key elements for the challenge app.

“We then verified our findings in the form of a prototype with their gym members. In essence, our job was to align the gym and gym members’ goals,” said Joe Tuan, CEO and Founder, Topflight Apps.

The prototype re-affirmed some elements of the app’s design:

·        Daily habit tracking, the log that lets customers track each time they follow through on a habit

·        Personal trends over time so that they can see their status and see where and when they do well or struggle

·        Community inspiration, leaderboards that give them bars to meet and help them feel like they are all working to move forward in accountability

·        Community reinforcement (fist bumps) and how the design helps with motivation through positive reinforcement of meeting goals and developing positive habits

Creative Sample #10: Updated dashboard in nutrition and lifestyle app

Creative Sample #11: Updated nutrition and lifestyle app home screen on mobile

The prototype also brought up challenges with the design. For example, a few testers had an issue with the payment during the registration step. The payment amount and what you were buying were unclear. That’s because the Habitap team thought it wasn't necessary since the pricing structure was noted on the website, which is how people get to the registration.

However, based on this customer feedback, the lead designer added the payment amount and product/s being purchased before taking customers’ payment information.

“I thought it’d be best to add into the design how much they will be paying and why before taking customers’ payment information, as that’s not really something people enjoy doing without transparency — even if they could already know how much the program costs from the link through which they arrived at the site. I felt it was better to be redundantly transparent when accepting payment methods, just in case,” said Nathan Freemyer, UX/UI Team Lead, TopFlight Apps.

In the screenshot below, you can see the final registration page built based on customer feedback from the prototype — customers can see that they are paying $95 for a 10-week challenge.

Creative Sample #12: Final registration page for nutrition and lifestyle app

As a result of the updated app, based on prototyping and validating the app with end users, participation in the nutrition and lifestyle challenges increase dramatically.

“We had more people sign up for our current challenge than who signed up in all of last year’s challenges combined,” said Chad Cole, Founder, Habitap.

https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/4-successful-website-design-changes-big-and-small?utm_source=MS-list&utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter&utm_campaign=ALLlists