"Can naturopaths deliver complementary preventive medicine?" Thus ran the headline in a recent editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Getting to health doesn't need to be all that complicated. And it also doesn't need to be about "should." Don't pursue health because it's an obligation, or because someone says you should. Pursue health because health is a currency you can spend on living better.

With the help of a cameo appearance by a friend you are likely to know, a preventionist reflects on vulnerability -- and the opportunity to take arms against a sea of troubles imperiling our children, and by opposing -- end them!

Epidemic obesity and chronic disease is, like a perfect storm, the product of massive and protean forces. It is an emergency in slow motion, but an emergency just the same. Like any other storm, these threats call for a brisk and well-coordinated crisis response that has yet to materialize fully.

My opinion is that the next big thing in health promotion will be a rediscovery, and reaffirmation, of the family. Because children and parents shape one another's culture. Because adults and kids will get to health together, or probably not at all. Because in unity, there is strength.

The predominant efforts of health promotion might reasonably be catalogued in terms of carrots, sticks, and leading people to water -- whether or not we can make them drink it. Which leads, naturally, to horses.

More and more companies are enrolling their workforce in health and wellness programs to cut staggering health care costs, reduce absenteeism and foster productivity as well as morale and loyalty, according to several studies on recent changes in employer-based health care policies.

Several years after making headlines for its health care reform, Massachusetts is back in the news, this time for passing legislation that aims to impose a cap on overall health care spending. That ambition implies, even if it doesn't quite manage to say, a very provocative word: rationing.

Our popular culture acts as if it would make sense to optimize one wing of a plane. The plane is either fit to fly -- or not. You can't fly half a plane. Selectively cultivating the health of favored organs or body parts is a comparable flight of fancy.

If you believe that empowering health-focused, integrative approaches and practitioners can make a difference in transforming U.S. health care, the convening of this event was a beautiful thing to behold.

Steven Spielberg recently made his case for Super 8. In the spirit of less-is-more, I make mine for Super 6: the list of six factors most likely to add years to our lives, and life to our years.

Knowledge is not power. Where there's a will, there may or may not be a way. And fitness must be made to fit. Some truths are, indeed, self-evident -- others require a bit of cultivation.