Preventable Chronic Disease on the Rise; Obesity, Diabetes Undermining Country’s Overall Health

From the American Public Health Association 2011 Press Release

America’s Health Rankings Finds Preventable Chronic Disease on the Rise; Obesity, Diabetes Undermining Country’s Overall Health

• Nation made no progress in improving health in 2011 after three years of gains
• Modest decreases in smoking and preventable hospitalizations
• Dramatic increases in obesity and diabetes, combined with still-too-high levels of tobacco use, are putting more people at risk for preventable illness and higher health expenditures
• The Rankings indicates that every person that quit smoking in 2011 was offset by a person becoming obese
• 2011 is the first year no state had an obesity prevalence under 20 percent
• United Health Foundation launches “Take Action for Change” Facebook campaign to incent healthy behavior

Washington, D.C., Dec. 6, 2011 – United Health Foundation’s 2011 America’s Heath Rankings® finds that troubling increases in obesity, diabetes and children in poverty are offsetting improvements in smoking cessation, preventable hospitalizations and cardiovascular deaths. The report finds that the country’s overall health did not improve between 2010 and 2011 – a drop from the 0.5 percent average annual rate of improvement between 2000 and 2010 and the 1.6 percent average annual rate of improvement seen in the 1990s…..

Related articles

• United Health Foundation’s America’s Health Rankings (bespacific.com)
• New Ways Calories Can Add Up to Weight Gain(wsj.com) “t isn’t so much what you eat, the study suggests, but how much you eat that counts when it comes to accumulating body fat.”
• Glimmer of Hope in U.S. Obesity Picture(Medical News Today)

• iOverweight people have a weight thermostat that is turned up too high (KevinMD.com)
• Prevalence of Obesity in the United States, 2009–2010 (full text reports)
  Key findings 
  + More than one-third of adults and almost 17% of youth were obese in 2009–2010.
  + There was no change in the prevalence of obesity among adults or children from 2007–2008 to 2009–2010.
  + Obesity prevalence did not differ between men and women.
  + Adults aged 60 and over were more likely to be obese than younger adults.
• Vermont keeps title of healthiest state, report shows – Reuters (reuters.com)
• America’s Health Rankings 2011: Which state scored worst? (cbsnews.com)
• Obesity And Diabetes Undermining America’s Overall Health (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Cough-cough, puff-puff. Oklahoma looks a little sick (newsok.com)
• Tennessee moves up 3 slots in U.S. health ranking (knoxnews.com)
• America’s Health Report Card: Needs Improvement (webmd.com)
• Report: America’s Health Deteriorated In 2011 (thinkprogress.org)
• America’s Health Rankings 2011 Released (aa47.wordpress.com)