Who can forget the moment they learned that the mother pregnant with octuplets was single and had six more kids at home, all very young?
Or the moment when they learned that despite years of passionate and thoughtful education about mammograms, a federal panel was now recommending that women get them later, and less often?
We hadn’t really seen anything like the H1N1 swine flu warnings and worries in a long, long time. Experts compared the pandemic flu to the 1918 flu, which killed thousands and thousands who had no immunity. This flu, which jumped to humans from pigs, most affected children and pregnant women, unlike regular seasonal flus.
Those are three of the four of USA Today’s top four health stories of 2009. The fourth? It is neither new nor novel. It will not surprise you. We have been down this road before. Arguably, it could be the most important health story of the entire decade.
Obesity. We are killing ourselves, people. We are paying for it physically and financially.
From the USA Today year in review story:
“Several studies released this year examined the heavy toll obesity takes on people's health. One showed that 100,500 new cases of cancer were caused by obesity every year. The American Institute for Cancer Research found that the cancers most strongly linked to excess body fat include breast, endometrial, kidney, colorectal, pancreas, esophageal and gallbladder.
“Meanwhile, two other studies showed that obesity was taking a hefty toll on the U.S. health care system because it increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other health problems.
“Americans who are 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight cost the country an estimated $147 billion in weight-related medical bills in 2008, double the amount a decade ago, said a study released in July by government scientists and the non-profit research group RTI International. Obesity now accounts for 9.1% of all medical spending, up from 6.5% in 1998.”
The CDC has an entire portion of its website devoted to obesity and its related health problems. There are links to a Body Mass Index calculator , links to resources and information on childhood obesity. Just the page of obesity trends is frightening: African-Americans have the highest rate of obesity, southeastern states are more at risk; low-income children are most vulnerable, and our body mass index as a country is out of control.
From the site:
“Results from the 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey … indicate that an estimated 32.7 percent of U.S. adults 20 years and older are overweight, 34.3 percent are obese and 5.9 percent are extremely obese .
“One of the national health objectives for 2010 is to reduce the prevalence of obesity among adults to less than 15 percent.”
And the Harvard Health Letter said this about health care reform, which they named their second health story of the year after the swine flu:
“The outcome is still in doubt, but some basic elements of health care reform (look) to be in place: a mandate requiring individuals to buy health insurance, tighter regulation of health insurers, and the creation of computerized “exchanges” where people and small employers can shop for affordable policies. But chances are that legislation, if it does become law, won’t do nearly enough to control costs.”
The USA Today story:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-12-28-Healthyearinreview28_ST_N.htm
The CDC obesity page:
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/index.html
The Harvard Health Letter:
http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/the-top-health-stories-of-2009