I found this article from one of my favourite Internet indulgences. It's an excerpt from Ladies Home Journal in 1901, and it's a series of predictions for where the world will be in 100 years. It's pretty interesting. I suggest you have a look.

In there, there's a bunch of food predictions -- strawberries as large as apples and peas as large of beats are two of them -- and there's even a couple of predictions on the health and fitness of people in the new millennium:

Everybody Will Walk 10 Miles. Gymnastics will begin in the nursery where toys and games will be designed to strengthen the muscles. Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. A man or woman unable to walk 10 miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling. Um ... right. It was wishful thinking to assume that Americans would get healthier -- we seem to have done the opposite, in fact.

Source

More and more doctors worldwide are using weather patterns to help get a jump on disease epidemics and other health concerns. In Kenya an outbreak of Rift Valley Fever was curtailed significantly due to rainfall and satellite imaging reports from NASA, and unseasonably warm temperatures in Europe have helped increase risks for malaria and encephalitis.

Although the technology is there to make these predictions, the manpower to back them up and actually do anything with the information isn't always available. In Kenya the outbreak of Rift Valley Fever was greatly reduced due to the advance warning, but in other cases -- like the heat wave in Europe in 2003 -- the outcomes haven't been so positive.

Like anything, what it really takes is money.

Source